


Ghost Stories

by humblepirate



Category: Youtube RPF
Genre: Angst, Blowjobs, Dirty Talk, Eating out, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hickies, M/M, Possession, Sex, Slow Burn, like the ghost kind
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2018-11-09 11:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11103237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humblepirate/pseuds/humblepirate
Summary: (Originally posted on my first account, whorelequins)You're an amateur vlogger specializing in stories about the paranormal. You've done this a million times, and you hadn't expected the trip to the old jail to be any different- until the resident poltergeist takes an interest in you.





	1. FAQ

Q: How long will this fic be?

A: I don't know!! The chapters are really long (so far they've all been about 5-6k words each) and writing them takes a lot out of me, but that's only because I have so many ideas and so much to write! I do have an ending in mind so I'll give a rough estimate of no more than four or five more chapters.

 

Q: How often does it update?

A: Whenever I finish the latest chapter, haha. I don't have a consistent update schedule in mind though I try to post a new chapter at least every week. I don't really have the ability to commit to a regular schedule right now, sorry!

 

Q:  What's "dark" Ethan's name?

A: That's something I'm kinda waffling about actually. I'm not typically a huge fan of RPF so my YouTuber-related fics really center around these "dark" personas because those are technically not real people, right? I actually felt really weird when I first started writing this fic because it was originally going to just be quick Antisepticeye smut, and then I changed it to Ethan, and he doesn't really do the whole glitch-character thing. There isn't a whole lot of fan stuff about it either- my inspiration for the character mostly comes from the thumbnail for part 3 of his Oxenfree series.

So, to make a short story long- he doesn't have one! I just call him Ethan.

 

Q: Will Dark and Anti show up?

A: Not in this fic, but I have something coming up very soon that Dark and Anti fans will very much enjoy ;)

Edit: it's finally uploaded!! It's called Birthday Sex!

 

Q: I don't really understand how Ethan got possessed?

A: Me neither! Haha but really, I don't know a whole lot about the scientific side of ghost-y stuff. For the purposes of this fic, basically, my take on it is this: when someone dies through some unjust means (murder, for instance), their spirit remains in the realm of the living until they come to terms with their passing. However that happens is up to them (and any humans they may meet along the way). They essentially exist in a kind of purgatory, which is why many of them are malevolent. A lot of them (such as the other ghosts in the old jail) are stuck reenacting the final moments of their lives, because they don't really know what else to do- a lot of them don't even understand that they're dead. Hanging around them is dangerous because they're basically always looking for something solid to glom onto and make sense of what's happening to them. Ethan happened to be reeling from an emotionally affecting experience which made him psychologically vulnerable to be taken advantage of by these restless spirits. This particular ghost just happened to be the first one to get to him.

Since then he's pretty much just been chilling in Ethan's subconscious. They can communicate with one another and the ghost can sometimes influence his thoughts or actions to a certain degree, but it takes a lot of energy to do a full-on possession, so it doesn't happen often. It's easiest for the ghost to take over when Ethan is psychologically affected in a significant way- for example, crushing majorly on his uncle's super sexy new tenant ;) Most spirits tend to go overboard and exhaust their human hosts, so it's not uncommon for people possessed by malevolent spirits to die within months or even weeks of the initial possession- which is why the reader is so surprised that Ethan's still alive and relatively healthy after a full year of carrying around his unwanted ghost-passenger.

But! All of this will be elaborated upon in the coming chapters. This is just the basic gist of the matter so people don't get confused.

 

Q: What's the reader's gender?

A: I try to make it as gender neutral as possible, so I avoid pronouns when I can and if they're absolutely necessary I just use they/them/theirs. I recommend using the Chrome extension [InteractiveFics](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/interactivefics/pcpjpdomcbnlkbghmchnjgeejpdlonli?hl=en) as it not only automatically changes Y/N to your name, but you can use it to change any other word, so you can change they pronouns to whatever you prefer. For the sexy bits, I only really know what I've experienced so it's all from the pov of a reader with breasts + vagina, but I'm thinking of creating an alternate version for readers working with penis + testicles if there's enough of an interest!

 

Q: Not a question but I love this fic! More please!

A: First, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU

Seriously, I really appreciate all the comments and kudos! I check my inbox several times a day because I crave validation and am also really proud of this story so far and I'm so thrilled that people actually like it. I probably wouldn't even be writing this much if it weren't for the people who tell me how much they enjoy the story and want to see more of it. It makes me really happy to know that I can possibly bring a little more joy into people's lives with my self-indulgent ghost smut. Know that I love and appreciate each and every one of you <3

Second, more is coming!! I have two more stories in the works, one very short and the other VERY long, so please hang tight! I'll probably take a hiatus after finishing Ghost Stories so I can wrap up those fics, unless I summon some magical burst of energy that somehow helps me finish them early. But don't fret! (Edit: they've bother been posted! They're called Kiss Me Thru the Phone and Birthday Sex. I would love you forever if you went and left a kudos or somethin'.)


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What should have been a routine film session in a haunted jail turns into something much, much worse.

 

Standing at the entrance to the old city jail, you feel as if you’re about to cross the threshold into colonial days. The building is all original stone and brick, crumbling and gray as the meagre patch of forest in which it resides. Even though you’re in the heart of downtown, the copse of trees surrounding the lot makes it seem miles away. You can only just hear the sounds of wailing sirens and honking cars over the noises of the isolated little park. The building is located in a wildlife sanctuary, famous for its budding population of the endangered white-tailed towhee and the site of the country’s oldest standing jail. Just one of Emeryville’s many charms.

A thick summer breeze rustles the branches of the live oaks, and you can’t escape the feeling that they’re whispering about you. You’re certainly no skeptic; otherwise you wouldn’t be here carting a duffel bag full of ghost hunting equipment. Most people would probably feel creeped out by things like this, but you live for it. You’ve always been fascinated with the paranormal- it’s the whole reason you moved to Emeryville. Bootleggers, pirates, Confederates: this city has them all. Another thing it has in abundance is gentrification. Aside from the obvious negative effects on local residents and small businesses, the constant construction and renovations have been stirring up quite the surplus of spiritual animosity. You can feel it. Though, really, if someone turned your resting place into an H&M, you’d be pretty pissed off too.

The jail, though- that’s a real special place. When English settlers landed on this coast in 1670, this was the second building they made, right after St. Stephen’s Cathedral. It held your usual sinners- gamblers, debtors, thieves- but it wasn’t until the first Great Fire that the stories started up. No one knows exactly how it got started, but the prevalent theory is that it was caused by a young woman named Hattie Dickinson. She was the daughter of the town’s only pastor and a very pious woman. She fell in love with a gentleman from another town and they were set to marry, but when he was informed of the miniscule size of her dowry he took her virtue and left her a ruined woman. She took to climbing to the church steeple and wailing in the middle of the night. Finally, on the evening of October 2nd, 1681, Hattie Dickinson hung herself in her bedroom. As the story goes, the stool she had been standing on fell over and coliided with the table upon which a candle was sitting. The candle was knocked over, and the flame quickly spread.

The only building not wholly consumed by the blaze had been the jail, which was made entirely of stone and set a good ways apart from the rest of the town. Dozens of people died in the fire, and it was said that many of the prisoners, seeing the horror and being unable to stop it, decided to join their loved ones in the great beyond. Suicide was, of course, a sin, and piled on top of whatever they’d done to land themselves in the jail in the first place, the prisoners were guaranteed to be barred from heaven and their souls to reside in purgatory for eternity. That was when people began to whisper about apparitions in the night, restless spirits wailing in torment, especially around the jail. After a time, however, things quieted down as the town recovered from the fire and the scandals surrounding it. 

Then came Emeryville’s first murder.

It was 1691 and the arrival of violent Catholic radicals in the town following their expulsion from England had turned Emeryville into a war zone. A minister named Josiah Fitzpatrick had taken to preaching in the town square most afternoons, screaming damnation at anyone who came within his sight. The town council wrote to the lords proprietors of the colony, but when they received no response, they came up with their own solution. On the morning of August 31st, thirteen men went to Fitzpatrick’s home and pelted it with stones and bricks, shouting obscenities through the shattered windows. Neighbors and passers-by began to gather and join in. Fitzpatrick responded by grabbing his musket and shooting into the crowd. When the smoke cleared, a ten-year-old boy lay dead.

Fitzpatrick and eighteen of his most loyal parishioners were put in their own cell on the top floor of the jail. In the depths of the lowcountry summer, crammed into a space barely six feet square in a room with only a single locked door to the outside world, it didn’t take them long to perish from dehydration. Rather than deter the Catholics, however, their deaths served only to reinvigorate their cause. Fitzpatrick and his followers became martyrs, and pilgrims from across the colony came to pay homage at his destroyed home. The town council placed sentinels around the house to keep away the devotees, but they were not to be swayed.

It all culminated in early December, when a group of radicals from nearby Monck’s Hood arrived to pay respects. When they attempted to enter the home, a guard held them back with the butt of his musket. One of the radicals threw a stone at the guard’s head, and that was it. The scuffle was short, less than ten minutes, but at the end of it there were twenty-seven dead Catholics and three guards with spent powder horns. The guards were taken to court, and after only two days of deliberation they went free. Their victims were buried in the potter’s field. The families of the dead weren’t even aware of the incident until months later. And so Emeryville’s first murder was followed by its first massacre within four months, and the violent Catholic faction at last retreated into the shadows.

In the months following the Monck’s Hood massacre, guards in the jail began to report strange noises coming from the cell on the top floor, which had come to be sardonically referred to as the Fitzpatrick suite. Prisoners as well claimed to hear footsteps in the night, the sounds of a woman crying. Emeryville was still a small place and there were not many prisoners, so it was rare for the third floor to be occupied. A few times there was heard a tremendous  _ crack _ , followed by a scream and moans of horror. The guards whispered that it was Fitzpatrick reliving the awful mistake which had cost the lives of himself and his flock. They began to avoid that floor altogether and would not visit it unless under the most serious of circumstances.

Eight months after the massacre, a shifty youth named Samuel Young arrived from New England. He appeared to be of decent blood, but in truth he was a vicious gambler and had been cast out by his family for running up massive debts. He continued his spree in every tavern in Emeryville, of which there were only three, and caused such a ruckus that the constable had him arrested and placed in jail to await the payment of his debts. Young, being a self-important sort, demanded he be placed in his own cell, away from the “common” ruffians. The guards grudgingly placed him in the top floor cell.

He lived for three more days, and on the morning of the fourth, he was found on the floor of his cell, his throat and wrists crudely slit with his own shoe buckle.

After that, the town council decided to board up the entrance to the third floor.

Those are the bloodiest stories, and the only good ones in your opinion. The jail actually stopped being used as such in the 1730s after a massive earthquake damaged the foundation. It was used intermittently as storage by the government and home to the occasional family of raccoons, until an excess of Union prisoners of war and another Great Fire required its reactivation in 1863. After more than a century of existing in a precarious balance following the earthquake, it was hastily restructured and put back into use. The outdated ventilation technology made the jail, quite literally, an oven, especially during the summer months. From its reopening in 1863 to the conclusion of peace negotiations in 1866, over seven hundred soldiers died from malnutrition, heat stroke, and disease. That  _ really _ stirred the ghost story pot.

The jail stood empty until 1890, when the Colonial Dames of the Lowcountry purchased the lot and surrounding land. They converted the area into a sanctuary for the white-tailed towhee, the only sparrow indigenous to every state south of the Mason-Dixon. The park was a vision of natural splendor in the midst of urban bustle, and its crown jewel was one of the city’s original structures, the newly restored old jail. In the century or so since its restoration, however, its primary visitors have been the towhees and the occasional tourist. And, of course, paranormal researchers such as yourself.

You always make sure to do your homework before you go to a site. The dead were once people too, and so require the same measure of respect as living ones. Their names and stories must be preserved in order to protect their memory. You’ve always been a very empathetic person, and so you try to put yourself in the place of the spirits you’re researching. You learn their histories and approach them with a level of reverence, but neither are you a pushover. You’re always careful to close a door once it’s been opened. Although really, any numbskull who’s ever seen a horror movie should know that.

It’s early afternoon and the sun is boring down in a cloudless azure sky, making your skin prickle with heat. The walk had taken you all of fifteen minutes, but from the way you’re sweating it may as well have been fifteen miles. You had triple checked that you had plenty of water on you when you set out, but you check again just to be absolutely sure. Yes, there is the gallon jug of water you packed, wrapped in a plastic Whole Foods bag to keep it from leaking onto your equipment. You also have your cell phone-- fully charged, of course, plus a radio in case it gives out. There are two flashlights with backup batteries, as well as a third flashlight that operates with a hand crank. Your headlamp is strapped on and prepped, as is the GoPro secured on your chest. Everything is here. You’re ready.

So why can’t you open the door?

You look behind you at the oyster shell pathway curving into the trees. No one else is around. No one to stop you- though why would there be? The tours don’t run this time of day, and anyway you already have permission from the Dames. They even gave you a spare key so you could let yourself in. You tell yourself it’s just pre-adventure paranoia, totally natural even for an experienced (albeit amateur) explorer like yourself. Yep, totally natural. Everything’s cool here.

You insert the brass key into the door knob and turn. It opens with a soft  _ click _ and the door swings inward. You step inside and wrestle the hefty door closed. You snap on your headlamp and wait a minute to get used to the darkness. You expected the building to be cool, being windowless and made of stone, but it’s actually stiflingly hot. The strap of your duffel digs painfully into your shoulder and you are beginning to regret being so prepared.

You take a cautious step forward, and then another. There is no sound save for the almost inaudible echo of your footsteps.  _ This is stupid _ . You’ve been in a million haunted places before; why is this one getting to you so easily?

You shake off your ambivalence and continue down the hallway with a more determined step. Looming doors are set in the walls every dozen feet or so, which you presume to be the doors to the cells. You choose one at random and heave on the knob until it gives with a grudging sigh. The room beyond is tiny, only a little bit larger than your bathroom, and nearly bare. Straw and dust are scattered across the floor, the only furniture the filmy cobwebs in the corners. Not a window, nor even a crack in the wall to allow sunlight in. You can easily picture a prisoner going mad in this place.

You drop the duffel bag on the ground and kneel next to it to unpack your equipment. Besides the aforementioned survival supplies, you have a camera with night vision capability, a handheld voice recorder, and your favorite toy, an EMF meter. You turn the camera on, plug in your headphones, and then turn the lens toward your own face. You flip the viewfinder around so you can make sure you’re not getting a weird angle and then start recording.

“Hey guys, I’m (Y/N) and welcome to Holy City Hauntings. In this episode I’m going to be exploring the old city jail. Built in 1670…”

You give a quick run-down of the building’s history, then prepare for the actual filming. Headphones on, GoPro and handheld camera recording, and the rest of your gear tucked into your utility belt, you go back out into the hallway and continue in the direction in which you had been walking before, offering the occasional commentary. At the end of the hallway is a steep wooden staircase, its steps bowing under the weight of centuries of feet. You take your time heading up them- sometimes the best special effects come from good old fashioned suspense.

At the top is another hallway identical to the one below. Here, however, a nearby door stands half-open. You nudge it the rest of the way and find yourself in a surprisingly modern-looking classroom.

“This must be where historic preservation students from the university went to work,” you say. “Since the Dames purchased the property in the late nineteenth century, it’s basically been in a constant state of restoration. However, in the early nineties, historic preservation students from USC Emeryville started volunteering for the restoration, and it turned into an official program. For a while students could come here to learn about the building and the use of materials and architectural styles employed when the jail was first built. The program was discontinued a few years back, but I guess they didn’t bother cleaning it out that well.”

You turn to the blackboard at the front of the room and take a few steps closer. “I always say you have to be a skeptic to work in a place like this every day, but that’s not always the case,” you continue. “After the program was instituted, students began to complain about lots of little incidents- papers missing, lights flickering, electronics glitching out at random times.” You take another step closer to the board.

“One night, about five years ago, a student left some supplies in the classroom and had to return to get them. When she got back, the classroom door was locked, which it usually wasn’t because the front door of the jail was always secured. Anyway, after a few tries, it wouldn’t budge, so she decided to just give up and leave. Just as she was about to go, the door opened by itself.

“Naturally, she thought that was pretty creepy, but she wasn’t a believer- yet. She went inside to get her things, when suddenly she heard someone crying very softly. She thought it was her imagination, of course, but the sounds got louder. She turned around, and she saw a man lying  _ right here _ .”

You point to the floor below the blackboard. You continue, “So she did what any sensible person would do, and ran. When she told her professor about it, she described the figure as being small, but not like a child, more like a very thin adult, and covered only in a checkered blanket. It was facing the wall so she didn’t see its face, but she could see it shaking as it cried.

“Historical analysts believe that what that student saw was the ghost of Archibald Fisher. He was an English debtor who obtained passage to the colony in exchange for a period of indentured servitude in his patron’s household. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see his freedom. He died in-”

_ Creeeeeak _ .

Your heart sputters to a choking stop and you slowly turn around. The door to the classroom is open, exactly as you had left it, but it’s swinging slightly, as if having just been pushed. You shake your head and the motion stops. You snort at your own silliness and return to your story.

“Right. As I was saying. Fisher’s wife and child were ill, and after a lot of difficulty he obtained permission from his master to go to the next town to get medicine. When he returned, his master demanded more money before he would let Fisher go to his home. In desperation, Fisher reportedly gave the man everything he had, including the clothes on his back and the horse on which he had been traveling. He had to carry the medicine home on foot, naked, covered in only a blanket. When he got to his house, he discovered that his wife and child had died during his journey, and his master had taken advantage of his desperation to take what little wealth he had.

“In anger, Fisher went back to his master’s estate and stabbed him seven times with a kitchen knife. Neighbors heard the commotion and Fisher was immediately arrested and thrown in jail to await trial. Four weeks later he died, possibly of the unnamed disease that had carried off his family, some say of grief- but more likely from exposure or malnutrition.”

_ Fwump _ .

Your head whips around again. For a moment you think you imagined the sound, until you notice a small cloud of stirred dust dancing in the beam of your headlamp, and a large hardcover book lying sprawled on the floor.

You approach the spot with fear clawing at your throat. The book is lying on the flat of its spine with the pages splayed open to a copy of a wood etching. Your heart contracts when you recognize the image- a contemporary depiction of the arrest of Arthur Fisher. On the adjacent page is what appears to be his story.

“Wow, that’s fuckin’ eerie,” you say, trying to appear calm for the sake of the camera. Your eyes skim the text on the other page and your heart skips. “Well, lookie here, folks. Looks like I missed a detail of the, um, story. The disease was actually typhus. Good to know.” You chuckle uneasily. “I guess Arthur Fisher didn’t want me to mess up his story. Thanks, man.”

Pretending you’re calm helps, even though every hair on your body is bristling and there’s a tingling on the back of your neck telling you to  _ get the fuck out of there right fucking now _ . The only floor left is the boarded-up top floor, which of course you can’t get to anyway, so you’re nearly finished. Just a little bit longer and you’ll have enough footage for your episode.

You step back out into the hallway and take out your EMF meter. “Okay guys, not gonna lie, I’m a little bit weirded out by this place, so I’m just going to do a quick sweep with my meter and call it a day,” you tell the camera.

You walk to the end of the hallway opposite the staircase, taking careful steps and moving your arm in gradual up-down and left-right motions to get the best range possible. The level on your meter remains steady. At the end of the hallway you turn around and go back, stopping every few minutes to check in a few of the cells. Most of the doors are locked, and the few you can enter are similarly empty.

When you reach the staircase, you pull out your phone to check the time. The battery is still at 92%; you’ve only been in here for an hour. It’s felt like an eternity.

You return to the first floor and do your sweep a bit more hurriedly. Every second you spend in this building your skin prickles with apprehension, but the meter shows similar results downstairs. At last you return to the cell where you had stored your duffel and sit on the floor for the last bit.

You take out your voice recorder, turn it on, and place it on the floor in front of yourself. “What is your name?” you ask.

You pause, allowing a moment for the spirit(s?) to answer. After a few moments you continue, “How old are you?”

This continues for some time, with you asking questions like, “When were you born?” and “Do you know how you got here?” Normally you like to play the recording back immediately but spending more time in this place is the last thing you want to be doing right now, so you figure you’ll listen to them at home. With all the lights on. And plenty of alcohol.

You turn the lens toward your face again and flip the viewfinder. “Well, that was kind of a bummer. Considering all the cool history here, I was expecting  _ some  _ kind of encounter, at least. Still, it was cool to-”

You cut off as the viewfinder suddenly goes black. You shake the camera, as if that’s going to help at all, and flick the power switch a few times. Nothing happens, even though you’re almost positive you put new batteries in it just before you left. No matter. You fish the backup from your duffel and change them out, then get back to recording.

“Sorry about that, guys. My camera was being weird. So anyway-”

The viewfinder goes black again. Okay, you definitely know that backup was fully charged. How is this possible? (You know exactly how it’s possible, but you really don’t want to dwell on that fact right now.) Giving up, you close the viewfinder and set about packing up your equipment.

“Leaving so soon?”

Every muscle in your body grinds to a shrieking stop. You’ve been jumpy as hell since you got here, and the other things you’ve been able to explain away, but that… 

That was no imagination.

You crouch on the floor for what feels like ages, eyes fixed on the circle of yellow light that your headlamp casts on the floor, hardly daring to breathe. The silence is crushing, deafening, the air is heavy with the summer humidity and threatens to crack your bones and drown you in its silence…

Enough time passes that you can convince yourself you’re simply being paranoid and you resume packing up your equipment. You check your phone and see it’s now late afternoon. If you hurry you might be able to get all this footage imported before you have to go to bed.

Just as you reach for the duffel strap, your phone starts to grow hot in your hand. The screen begins to flicker, the pixels of your background twitching and distorting. The heat is searing, as if the device is on fire, and you fling it to the ground without thinking. As soon as it hits the floor the screen goes black.

A high-pitched beeping startles you from your panic. It’s the EMF meter, still strapped to your utility belt. You grab it and see the red needle inching carefully upward. The beeping increases in volume and pitch until the needle inches past seven milligauss, then eight… nine… ten… gradually ceasing to be a series of beeps and devolving into a singular high-pitched wail.

At this point you’re thoroughly petrified. You want to turn on the lights, to scream, cry, run, but all you can do is sit with leaden muscles and stare at the device in your hands.

“What’s the matter, kid?”

There’s that awful voice again. It’s nearly a whisper and yet it clamors in your ears. The intonation is soft and you can’t really tell if the speaker is male or female, or belonging to the corporeal realm at all. It makes your spine lock with fear.

Dread shoots through you as your headlamp flickers, then goes out.

“You’re right to be afraid.”

At that you forget about everything else. Your fingers scrabble for the duffel strap and you launch yourself into the hallway, sprinting by instinct toward the front of the building. Your footsteps pound against the centuries-old stone, but the sound is swallowed up in the horrible rattling which fills the space as the cell doors begin to shake. Creaking resounds from the ceiling; somewhere a woman sobs. And in the midst of it all, horrid, high-pitched,  _ gleeful _ laughter.

You don’t know how you get to the front door. All you know is you’re standing on the sidewalk along Berkeley Street, leaning against the gated entrance to the park and breathing like you’ve just run a mile. It’s a blazing summer afternoon but you are positively chilled. It takes you several minutes to register that you’re safe, surrounded by people and cars and buildings. No ghosts here now.

You shoulder your duffel and head to your apartment.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You go back to the jail, and this time you're being followed.

The sun had not yet dipped below the horizon when you got back to your apartment. The door had been unlocked and a pot of mac ‘n cheese congealing on the stove, sure signs that your roommate was home. Knowing you were not alone in the house had been enormously reassuring. You scraped the nasty pasta into the trash and put the pot in the sink to soak in warm water, then kicked off your shoes and padded down the hallway to your bedroom. You considered it lucky that you had the bedroom on the first floor, even if it was the smallest one in the house. You deposited your duffel on the floor and collapsed onto the bed.

It wasn’t late, and especially in the middle of August, the world outside was still fairly bright. Even so, you’d felt drained and limp like you’d been squeezed through a laundry wringer, and you wanted nothing more than to lose consciousness for a while. You’d crawled under the covers and fallen into an unusually black and empty sleep.

Now you’re at the breakfast table, contemplating your cereal. The table is usually covered in so many empty wine bottles and discarded magazines that there’s barely room enough to place your bowl, but you’re enjoying the sunlight filtering through the grimy window. You tried to clean it once, but turned out all the windows in the building were painted shut for some reason.

Your mind drifts to the duffel bag in your bedroom and your heart aches with dread. This is the part you’ve been looking forward to the least- not just because editing is the bane of your existence, but because you really don’t feel like reliving the whole debacle. Telling yourself that your fears are silly, now that you’re safe and far away from the jail, doesn’t help much. But you can only put it off for so long.

You pour the milk from your empty bowl into the sink and leave it to wash later, then take your duffel and laptop into the living room. You prefer to work on the floor in the middle of the room, sunlight streaming through the large bay windows and the sounds of the city in the background.

You turn on your laptop, open Premiere, and pop the SD card from your camera into the computer slot. When the clip finally finishes importing, the thumbnail is black. That should have been your first clue, but you don’t even think about it- after all, you had been filming in a windowless prison.

Your next clue comes when you drag the footage into the timeline. The audio track is completely blank, as if it hadn’t recorded any sound at all. You play the clip back and, indeed, there is no sound. It’s just eighty minutes of flat black screen and silence.

A sudden  _ pop! _ makes you jump. The smell of burning plastic assaults your nose and you notice a wisp of pale grayish smoke coming from the laptop’s battery. With a yelp you jump back. The screen flickers and glitches out. Out of panic, you do the only thing you can think to do, which is to hit the power button and slam the computer closed, sitting as far back from it as you can comfortably get.

Minutes pass and nothing more happens. The smoke has dissipated, although the room is still filled with the awful burning stench. You cautiously remove the SD card from your laptop and groan when you see that it is burnt brown and warped. You pick up the laptop and gasp at the sight of the rectangular scorch mark on the carpet beneath it. That’s going to be fun to explain to your roommate.

With a defeated sigh, you reach for your cell phone so you can start looking for a new laptop. You pull all the equipment out of your duffel, but the device isn’t there. You get up and search all through your room, until you suddenly remember- you’d dropped it in the cell during the previous afternoon’s activities.

Fucking grand.

Your alarm clock tells you that it’s almost noon. You don’t have to go to work until seven, and the jail is only a fifteen minute walk away. Plenty of time to pop over and grab your phone. You can even stop by the Dames’ office on the way back to return their key, and then you’ll never have to go back to that stupid place again.

August heat crashes over you in a humid wave as you step outside. Cicadas rattle their death knells and dry gravel crunches under your sneakers. You put on your headphones and pull up your favorite playlist on your iPod. It’s probably fitting that someone who’s obsessed with old dead things would still use an iPod. The air shimmers in the waves of heat radiating off the asphalt and not the slightest breeze stirs the wilting fronds of the palmettos. You pass by tourists fanning themselves in the shade of storefronts and cars with drivers leaning out the windows. A few times you see the carriages drawn by horses steered by tour guides, most of whom you know. You wave to them as you pass.

The park is a bit off the main streets of downtown, nestled among a labyrinth of gravel streets and old colonial-style buildings- the remnants of the old city. Tourists are fewer and traffic less hectic, so it’s prime real estate for trust fund yuppies who can afford the upkeep required to live in the old homes.

Only one other person is in the park, an elderly jogger who should know better than to be out in this heat. They take no notice of you as you turn off the neatly paved path and follow the oyster shell trail toward the spot where the trees grow most thickly. Your heart gives a lurch upon seeing the jail again, but you force yourself to march up the front steps and insert the little brass key. The door falls open with an unearthly creak, and you suppress a shudder as you step inside.

For a moment you entertain the idea of keeping the door open, but on the very off chance that the jogger turns out to be a wrinkly jail thief, or some similar accident happens while you’re in here, your reputation with the Dames will be fucked. Still, you make sure to crank up your lantern to maximum illumination before you close the door behind you and cut off the sunlight.

It smells stale and hot in the rotting hallway. Inside the decrepit brick walls the heat and humidity is infinitely worse than outside and laced with a subtle putrid scent that you hadn’t noticed the day before. Bits of stone and dead leaves whisper under your feet as you march down the hall. Lifting the lantern to peek inside the cells, you’re struck by the peculiar sensation that you are not really where you are. Rather, you feel almost like you’re in some indie horror game, and any second some poorly-rendered apparition is going to dash into your field of vision for a couple frames and deliver a good jump scare. You’re actually quite skittish, for someone who researches dead people for a living. Wandering haunted buildings in the dead of night you can do, but watch a scary movie and you dive under the covers at the first sign of danger.

That said, you’ve never had trouble differentiating reality from fiction. You pride yourself on being a remarkably level-headed person, and you’re fairly apt at keeping your work separate from your personal life. Even though your work basically takes up your entire life. You’ve never really gotten scared in a haunted spot before. Sure, you’ve seen some shit, but you’re a firm believer in the ability of science to explain any unusual phenomena you encounter. The same should apply to this place as well.

So why is your heart beating so quickly?

You nearly sob with relief when you finally locate the correct room. Your phone is dead but otherwise unscathed, so you pray that it just needs a good charge and hasn’t suffered any real damage. You pocket the device and are ready to skidaddle when something at the end of the hallway catches your eye- something pale and indistinct pressed against the wall.

One part of your brain, the rational part, screams at you to bolt, but the paranormalist in you tugs your feet toward the vision. You lower your lamp and inch slowly down the hall. When you get closer, you can see that it isn’t anything solid at all, but a light coming from somewhere upstairs. Could one of the dames be putting in some extra hours? You listen for signs of human activity, but there is nothing, not even the distant noise of the city.

Against your better judgement, you climb the stairs.

At the top you can clearly see the source of the light. The door to the classroom yawns open to allow the light from one of the windows into the hallway. Oddly enough, you’re sure that all the windows are supposed to be boarded up. Ignoring the instincts telling you to run, you step into the classroom for a closer look. Yes, the only other window in the room is blocked by strips of wood to guard against the outside elements. The open window contains no glass and rusty bars which dapple the sunlight streaming through. You look around for signs of tampering, but there is nothing- no broken wooden beams or pried-out nails. Like the boards had just disappeared.

You cross the room and peer outside. This window overlooks the patch of dry grass on the north side of the jail, where the gallows used to be installed. You shiver at the thought. Despite the stillness outside, a slight draft raises gooseflesh on your skin.

Just as you’re about ready to declare this little detour to be complete, a sound reaches your ears which makes you freeze in place. There is the distinct murmur of human voices coming from somewhere out in the hallway. You can’t distinguish what is being said but you can tell that it’s not something you are imagining.

A million rational explanations run through your mind, discarded almost as soon as they come to light. This is something beyond the realm of reason.

You step out into the hallway and listen hard. The voices seem to be coming from somewhere to your left. You walk forward hesitantly and lift your lamp. What you see makes your heart leap into your throat. There is a door in the wall at the end of the hallway, just beyond the staircase, a door that you are completely positive was not there the first time you came here.

You don’t know why you walk toward it. You’re not even sure you’re in control of your actions anymore. You simply stride across the hallway and reach for the doorknob.

It opens without any resistance and swings silently inward. The fact that the archaic hinges make no sound is more unnerving than the door itself. Beyond it is a precarious-looking wooden staircase that looks like it hasn’t seen any visitors in centuries. 

This must be the entrance to the third floor.

You start up the stairs and they groan under your weight. For a moment you wonder if the lack of use has made them unstable, but you reach the top without incident. 

The space is much more open than the lower floors, rather than being divided into enclosed cells. It looks rather like an attic, with the angled ceiling so low you have to take care not to bump your head. The windows up here are barred but  not boarded up, so the daylight streams freely through the glass, though they’re marred by so many layers of grime that you would hardly be able to see without the aid of your lantern. You step carefully across the floorboards- unlike in the rest of the building, the floor here is made of wood rather than stone- and you can see flurries of dust stir in the wake of your footsteps.

Something at the end of the room draws your eye. You step closer, and when you get near enough your stomach contracts with nausea. It’s a cage, hardly grazing the already substantially low ceiling and barely wide enough on each side for three grown men to stand shoulder to shoulder. This has to be the cell where Josiah Fitzpatrick and his parishioners were held. Your hand reaches of its own accord to touch the bars but stops just shy of the decrepit metal. Something about being here feels suddenly very disrespectful.

You take a step back, and then the sound that you hadn’t noticed had faded away suddenly comes again, seemingly right next to your ear. Voices whispering so close to you yet their words indistinguishable, and still somehow you feel as if they are angry at you, judging you.

You back up several more paces, glancing around for the source of the sound, when you back into something solid. You let out a scream of terror and vault back in the direction of the cage. You spin around, hoisting your lamp to aid your sight, but there is nothing there. Only empty space. The voices get louder, surrounding you, admonishing you.

This was a mistake.

You’re trying to muster the strength to bolt back down the stairs when you feel a cold shudder up your back. Except- no, this is something else. Some _ one _ . Cool fingers brush the nape of your neck-

You scream again and jerk away from the source of the sensation. You stumble and collide against the wall, sending a cloud of dust and stone detritus raining down. Your grip is iron solid on the lantern’s handle. Your eyes dart around the room but more out of instinct than a serious desire to locate the source of your tormenter. You know now that this is beyond the realm of naked observation.

“Oh, do please keep screaming for me, darling.”

Your soul nearly exits your body at the sudden whisper-close voice. A white blankness comes over your brain. Time slows and all you can feel is the raw, uninhibited terror paralyzing you. Your mouth is completely dry and you’re pretty sure that if your heart beats any more quickly it’s going to completely rupture your ribcage.

A cool touch drifts along your jaw, almost gentle, and pangs of terror shoot through your numb brain. The sensation shocks feeling into your paralyzed state. With a cry you wrench yourself from the wall and sprint toward the stairs. You practically fly down the two stories and through the main hallway to the front entrance. You don’t even stop to lock the door behind you, just run through the copse of live oaks and across the park and down the sidewalk. You don’t see anything other than the cement path back to your apartment. You run and run and don’t allow yourself a rest until you slam your apartment door behind you and collapse on the floor.

Rivulets of perspiration trickle down your skin, but you’re filled with an inexplicable chill. You lie there in the entryway, panting and aching, until you hear your roommate call out to you from the living room.

“(Y/N), is that you?” she asks.

Around pained heaves of air you squeak out, “Yeah, it’s me.”

When you’re sure you can stand without falling over, you heave yourself to your feet and get a glass of water from the kitchen. You stumble down the short hallway to the living room and collapse on the couch. Your roommate is curled up on the loveseat, texting on her phone while some nineties sitcom plays on the TV. When she glances up at you, her eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“Did you go for a run in this heat?” she asks.

You nod in affirmation. Technically, it’s not a lie. She accepts the excuse, anyway, and says nothing more while you gulp down your water. You place the empty glass on the coffee table and haul yourself to your feet. What you really need now is a cool shower. You start the water running and peel off your sweat-soaked clothes, dropping them in a pile on the floor.

The water feels remarkable on your flushed skin. The internal chill you’d felt before slips away down the drain with the sweat and shampoo, leaving you feeling purified.

By the time you’ve finished your shower and changed into your sweats, damp hair wrapped up in your towel, your roommate is gone. You take your glass into the kitchen and notice that the previous night’s mac ‘n cheese pot is still in the sink. Typical. Since you’re already there, you decide to wash the rest of the dishes, then wipe up the liquid cheese remnants on the stove. After that you begin to scrub the kitchen counter, then tidy the dining table, and before you realize it you’ve cleaned the entire apartment, even going so far as to make your bed.

You collapse on the freshly plumped living room couch and lean back with a sigh. Your legs are still shaky from your run and the cleaning stint has made your heartbeat pick back up, but the fear from before has receded. You check the clock and see that you still have a couple hours until work, so you resolve to chill out with a nice book until you have to leave, and hopefully put the afternoon’s episode behind you.

 

 

The tours are reasonable enough. You have two full groups, one a bachelorette party and the other mostly composed of elderly Europeans on a cruise. They aren’t much more obnoxious than the usual tour, and they actually give you some fairly decent tips (though when a stooped German woman hands you a twenty, you’re pretty sure she doesn’t understand the value of the currency and try to give it back, but she pats your hand and insists). When the final tourist has departed for the overpriced parking garage and you’ve counted up all your tips from the night (nearly a hundred bucks between both groups), it’s close to eleven and your feet are begging for a reprieve.

Normally you would end your night with a few rounds at O’Sullivan’s tavern with the other local guides, but right now the main thing on your mind is getting into your bed. Although your feet shriek with each step, you’re not even ten minutes’ walk from your apartment, not nearly far enough to justify the cost of an Uber. Your mother hates you walking home alone at night, but you always remind her that downtown Emeryville is far safer than your bumfuck-nowhere hometown. At least here you have street lights.

Even though it’s relatively early for a Saturday night, there’s hardly anyone else on the street as you make your way back home. It’s much more tolerable without the sun bearing down on you, and a pleasant, humid breeze has begun to pick up. You’re actually in a pretty nice mood.

You’ve never really been scared to walk home alone at night here. You live right downtown so nothing is ever an unreasonable walking distance from your apartment, and being so close to the college campus, there are always public safety officers about even in summertime. Most of the stores and restaurants are closed by now, but the storefronts bathe the streets in a bright neon glow. Emeryville is a tiny city and a pious one (for the most part), so you don’t see anyone else on the street aside from the occasional parking lot attendant.

The way back to your apartment ducks behind the main street and through a small shopping square arranged around a parking lot. There are only two cars parked there at this hour. The open space makes you a bit nervous, but it’s faster to cut across the lot than to go all the way around the edge of the plaza.

_ You’re right to be afraid. _

The words echo in your mind as you step off the sidewalk onto black asphalt. Your heartbeat picks up at the memory- and not necessarily in a bad way. Maybe it’s the aftermath of a night of successful tours and the promise of a soft bed just minutes away, but you think you actually kind of… enjoyed it? Aside from the mortal fear, it was pretty cool to have an encounter with a real-life ghost. A creepy ghost who stalks you and whispers in your ear and chases you out of a haunted jail, but still.

Your mind is so wrapped up in the thoughts that you almost don’t notice the way the light fixture at the near end of the parking lot begins to flicker. Your heart leaps and your pace stutters. 

Your heart stops at the same moment that the plaza goes dark.

For several eternities you stand there, feeling your muscles creak and your blood rush through your head as you try really really hard not to freak the fuck out. In the next moment the lights snap back on, and the plaza is once again awash in the eerie glow from the street lights.

You grit your teeth against the terror rising in your gut and open your mouth to call out, “Who’s there?” Your voice is blessedly calm and not nearly as wrecked as you feel.

Harsh, disembodied laughter makes your limbs twitch in fear, but you force yourself to stand unmoving.

“Just leave me alone,” you snap.

The laughter turns to a patronizing click of the tongue. “Manners,” the voice chides you. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar?”

“So you admit that you’re an obnoxious insect,” you spit.

The voice gasps in mock injury. “Ooh, that wasn’t very nice. Now you’ve hurt my feelings.”

“Boo fucking hoo.”

The laughter strikes up again, and it’s eerie how the voice seems to be simultaneously coming from nowhere and everywhere. Pinpricks of terror crawl across your scalp but you bite back against them.

“I really don’t have time for this,” you say, doing your best to make your voice bored and detached. “So, unless you’re going to like, actually do something, instead of just hanging around being all creepy and vaguely threatening, I’m gonna go.”

The words come sickly sweet, right next to your ear.

“Move and you’re fucking dead.”

Out of instinct you jerk your elbow directly back, not really expecting anything to be there. Except there is- you feel your elbow connect with flesh and a pained cry splits the air, sounding somehow more solid than before. You spin around, fist cocked to confront the apparition, but there is only black asphalt and dim moonlight behind you.

A hand colder than marble and just as strong wraps around your fist and twists it painfully behind your back. You shriek in pain as you feel your tendons straining at the unnatural angle. You try to tear yourself free, but another hand jerks you back by your hair and clutches you to a body almost comically warm and soft in comparison to what it’s doing to you. The hand lets go of your hair and cold metal presses into your throat.

“Careful now,” the stranger croons, close enough that your body gives an involuntary shudder.

A chuckle rumbles through your captor’s chest. “Fuck, you’re easy,” the voice murmurs. “I was hoping you’d at least put up more of a fight. That would have been a lot more fun for the both of us, I think.” The knife presses harder against your skin. “Oh well.”

Your pulse pounds in your head and your limbs are going numb with terror, but when the blade digs into your skin, a spike of adrenaline rips through your body. Without thinking, you jerk your head back as hard as you can. The stranger lets go and stumbles back with a groan. You don’t bother trying to get a view of them- all you can think is to  _ run _ .

Blood throbs in your ears as you sprint across the parking lot and all you see is the sidewalk and the vague blur of the city buildings. You careen across the street to the opposite sidewalk and your sneakers pound against the cement as you run ever faster toward the next street. Only a few more blocks now, your apartment is just beyond the next intersection-

Something hits you like a scruffy missile and your head slams against stone. Black spots spurt across your field of vision as pain blossoms across your skull. An unnaturally cold hand is wrapped around your throat, pressing you against a brick wall in an unassuming alleyway. Your lips flounder as you struggle for breath, a numb tingling sensation begins to creep into your bones…

The hand loosens some and you choke in a desperate breath. As the oxygen returns to your brain, your vision focuses and you can properly take in the figure before you.

You immediately wish you hadn’t.

The stranger appears to be a man around your age, though it’s hard to tell in the dim lighting. He’s not much taller than you but you can see the lithe muscles beneath his unearthly pale skin. He’s wearing black skinny jeans and a nondescript black T-shirt which would be almost hilariously normal if not for the utter terror zapping your brain. He’s unusually thin for someone so powerful, and the planes of his narrow frame cast purplish shadows on his skin. His face is mostly obscured by a fringe of electric blue hair, but it’s his eyes that draw you. They’re a stark, cold white, completely sans pupils. They appear almost to glow in the shadows across his face.

“That was cute,” he says with a smirk. The saccharine tone in his voice is ebbing and it’s beginning to take on a gravelly edge.

“Fuck you,” you spit back.

He leans closer and brings his other hand up, the one still gripping the knife, and trails it almost leisurely along your jaw. “You’re a spirited one,” he murmurs. His mouth quirks into a grin that looks entirely too normal for his eerie white eyes. “Haha, get it? Spirit? ‘Cause I’m a ghost?”

You manage a satisfyingly agitated eye roll and hope he isn’t picking up on how absolutely petrified you are.

The grin disappears from his face and his pupil-less eyes shift to your neck. He traces invisible shapes across your skin with his pocketknife and watches the way the muscles in your neck jump at the sensation. The blade brushes over your cheek and the sting of cold metal makes you inhale sharply against your will. His eyes snap back to yours at the sound and you can feel him shift his body closer. He tilts his head and examines you with his steely, unfathomable gaze.

“I wonder,” he murmurs, “if I slit your throat, how long do you think it would take for your heart to stop beating?” He says it so casually that cold fear grips your spine. He smiles and leans closer, letting go of your throat and moving the hand to your waist, his lips just barely grazing your skin. His chest presses against yours as he takes a shuddering breath.

“God, your fear smells delicious,” he breathes.

You know you should be on the brink of collapse with everything that’s happening right now, but you can’t ignore the tiny part of your brain that is getting… kind of turned on. Is that weird? Probably. Definitely, yes. There is most certainly something wrong with you, but at least- for the moment, anyway- your blood is still inside your body, where you would very much like it to stay. No matter how pants-droppingly sexy this ghost is.

His teeth just graze the side of your neck and you can’t hold back a breathy sigh. A chuckle thrums through his chest and the sensation causes your heart to stutter. Heat rushes to your face as he tightens his grip on your waist.

He pulls back to take in your flushed expression. “Fuck, you’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you?” he snickers.

Your hands, which up to now had been limp at your sides, curl into fists. You dig your nails into your palms and the pain injects some measure of clarity into your muddled brain. It reminds you- this isn’t some weird fantasy, this is real life and you could actually get stabbed and you need to leave  _ right fucking now _ .

Almost as if sensing your thoughts, the ghost presses his hips to yours and slides a knee between your legs (much lower than where you’d like him to be, though you won’t admit it), effectively trapping you against the wall. The tip of the knife presses into your throat with the slightest pressure and he smirks down at you. You return his expression with a hard glare.

He grins again, showing his fairly normal-looking teeth and you’re not sure why that surprises you. “Normally I don’t like to play with my food,” he says, “but you’re fun.” He punctuates each word with a slight twist of the knife against your skin. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had any fun.”

“Should I be flattered?” you snarl.

“You should be begging,” he murmurs.

“Oh yes, I bet you’d just  _ love _ that,” you reply with a disdainful sneer.

His mouth twitches and you don’t miss the way his hips subtly press against yours. You swallow back a sigh. His knife plays across the muscles in your throat as you do so, and he leans in again to whisper against your neck.

“I won’t lie,” he murmurs, “the thought of seeing you on your knees is really fucking appealing right now.”

“I’m waiting for a but,” you say, eliciting a chuckle from him. You exhale shakily and try to hide it behind a raised eyebrow, but the effect is lost when his face is pressed against the side of your neck, his nose digging into your skin, hand coming up from your waist to run fingers through your hair…

A flash of pain makes you cry out, though combined with the sensations of just moments ago the sound comes out more sensual than surprised. He extracts his body from yours and you barely have time to be disappointed before his hand is gripping your chin, jerking your face close so he can look directly into your eyes with his own eerily blank ones.

He lifts the knife now smeared with your blood and runs his tongue along the blade. He cocks an eyebrow suggestively and you’re not sure whether the sensation in your lower body is arousal or nausea. 

Then you blink, and he’s gone.


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Your landlord's cute nephew is not what he seems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where the actual smart starts, yay!

“Hey guys, it’s me. I just wanted to film this real quick to let you all know that there won’t be any new videos for a couple weeks. My laptop kind of caught on fire, so I won’t have access to my editing software or anything. I’ve already ordered a new one and it should be here within the next week or so, but in the meantime I’ll be doing a ton of filming so once my new laptop comes in I’ll have a bunch of extra awesome videos to put together for you guys! I’ll be posting updates on my Twitter so make sure you follow me on there, link is in the description. I might record a few little behind the scenes things on my phone, but I don’t know, we’ll see. Anyway, that’s all I have for you guys today! Over and out.”

You kind of hate your outro, but you’ve been doing it for so long that you feel like it would be weird to stop now. You’ve been on YouTube long enough to have gained a fairly substantial following- not so great that you’d consider yourself internet famous or something, but enough that people would notice if you didn’t post for a while. Even though the channel is really just a hobby, you would hate to disappoint your subscribers.

You rest your chin on your crossed arms and glare at the brilliant sunlight outside the kitchen window. Your mood is way too sour for the sun to be this bright. Though your phone thankfully survived the adventure in the jail with minor damage, you’d had to dig substantially into your savings to afford a new laptop even with the tips rolling in from your last few tours. Without access to your editing software, you haven’t had much to do, and the boredom has been simmering all week.

Four days. That’s how long it’s been since you saw the ghost. Though it’s been on a near constant loop in the recesses of your mind, you’ve found that the memory grows dimmer with time. Only the sensation of closeness, the odd warmth of a dead boy pressing his hips to yours, and the hollows of his glowing blank eyes remain. You would almost have been able to convince yourself that the whole encounter had been a dream, if not for the thin red line on your neck where he’d cut you.

God, that’s so fucked up. A ghost- you’re way beyond pretending he could have been anything else within the realm of scientific explanation- had cornered you and threatened murder with a goddamn pocketknife, and now you’re practically getting off on the memory. A normal person would be halfway to the nearest priest for an exorcism. But then, you’ve never pretended to be a normal anything.

You stand from the dining table and bring your breakfast dishes to the sink. You’ve let them pile up over the past few days, hoping to send your roommate a hint, but they’ve begun to grow an oddly colored fuzz and she’s only added to the pile. You sigh as you resign yourself to a summer of washing everyone’s dishes.

As if sensing your disdain, your roommate chooses that moment to come downstairs, fully clothed before ten a.m. for once. She snags an apple from the fridge and hops up onto the counter beside you.

“What are you doing today?” she asks, taking a loud bite of the apple.

“Nothing yet. Why?” you reply.

“I called the landlord about the fruit fly problem. He’s sending someone over later today and one of us has to be here when he comes by, and I reeeeally wanted to go to the beach today.” She leans over the sink and bats her eyes at you. “Pleeeeease?”

You roll your eyes but smile at her. “Sure,” you say. “I didn’t have plans anyway.”

She squeals and hops off the counter to give you a tight hug. “You’re the best. I’ll bring you ice cream on my way home tonight.”

“Sure, sounds good.” You continue scrubbing at a pan of crusted-over soup as she slams the front door behind her, leaving the partially-eaten apple on the counter.

_ We wouldn’t have a fruit fly problem if you stopped leaving your food everywhere _ , you think as you throw it in the garbage.

Dishes cleaned and set up to dry, you pad down the hallway to your bedroom and look around the tiny space. It’s barely big enough for your bed and the little Home Depot bookshelf next to it. Most of your things are stored in boxes under your bed or in the little closet which can’t be open at the same time as the bathroom because the doors would collide with each other. Speaking of the bathroom, you really need a shower. You’re developing a weird funk from just sitting around and doing nothing.

It’s kind of strange to take a hot shower in the middle of August, but it’s not as if you’ve actually been going outside. The water feels purifying as it washes over you. You scrub your body with a loofah and it’s like all the anxiety and stress of the week comes off with it.

Right as you turn off the water, you can hear a sharp knock on the front door. Probably your roommate, coming back because she forgot her keys, as usual. “Just a minute!” you call out.

You pull too hard on the shower curtain and the cheap fabric comes loose from the rings. You give a shout and instinctively latch onto the curtain as you stumble, consequently ripping the curtain rod off the wall. You collide with the wall opposite the shower and land on the floor, still naked and clutching the curtain.

No time to get dressed; you wrap a towel around your important bits, grunting at the pain in your abused backside, and yank open the bathroom door, which opens right into the front hallway. You stretch up on your toes to reach the peep hole, just to make sure it’s no one you’d feel weird seeing you in just a towel- but the stoop is empty. You crack the door open a bit to peer outside- nothing.

You shrug, chalking up the knock to your imagination, and decide to go back to the bathroom and finish making yourself decent. You turn away from the door and suddenly there is another person in front of you, and you’re trapped between screaming and apologizing. The sound that comes out of your mouth is an unearthly combination of the two.

“Shit! Sorry,” the stranger says, whirling around. They stumble into the kitchen, out of view, and you’re frozen in the hallway. In just a towel. Fuck.

“I’m sorry, let me, uh- clothes!” you shout. You scurry into the bathroom and slam the door behind you, leaning against it as you try to collect yourself. There is a stranger in your house, a stranger who has seen you practically naked, and could possibly be a robber or a murderer or something. Would a robber apologize for stumbling on their victim in a towel? Probably not. Unless they were trying to trick you into thinking they weren’t actually a robber.

This train of thought is getting you nowhere.

You wrap the towel around your head and jam your legs into the underwear you’d brought into the bathroom with you. Your clothes are slightly damp from the spray you’d emitted during your soap-opera fall. You yank the tank top over your towel and assess yourself in the mirror. Face flushed, hair sticking out of your towel-turban, a considerable wet splotch on your shorts- yeah, totally presentable.

You leave the room and find the intruder leaning stiffly against the kitchen wall, face completely red with mortification. It’s kind of comforting to know that the emotion is mutual. Actually, now that you’re looking at him properly, he isn’t half bad. Not terribly brawny or tall, but with a decent build and a sweet face. His eyes appear almost to change color in the light, going from blue to green to hazel. His hair is tucked up in a beanie but you can see a few brown strands peeking out of the fabric.

It takes a moment for you to realize you’ve been staring at him. With a face probably about as red as his, you extend a hand. “Hi,” you say. “I’m Y/N.”

He gives a slight smile and returns the handshake. “I’m Ethan,” he replies.

“So, uh.” You withdraw your hand and rock back on your heels. “What are you doing here? In my, uh, apartment?”

“Oh! Right.” His face flushes again. “I’m your landlord’s nephew- I mean, my uncle, he’s your landlord- I think? Like, he’s my uncle, but I also work for him sometimes.” He grimaces. “I was told you have a fruit fly problem?”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, that. To be totally honest with you, I’m pretty sure it’s just because my roommate never cleans up after herself.”

“Yeah, that’d do it,” he agrees with a small smile, relaxing a bit. “Is it okay if I take a look around, just in case?”

“Go ahead.”

As he starts his examination of the kitchen, you hang out awkwardly to the side, not really sure what to do with yourself. It feels weird to just stand there staring at him, but it would probably be even weirder if you left, so you lean against the wall and try to look at anything but him. He finishes looking around the kitchen and goes past you into the living room. You follow him, mentally kicking yourself for not tidying it up.

“So, Ethan,” you say, and your voice sounds painfully loud in the awkward quiet. He glances over at you and you feel your heart quicken, but you clear your throat and continue. “Are you a student?”

“No. Are you?” he asks. You nod.

After a pause, he says, “What are you studying?”

You kick yourself again for being so awkward. He’s a just a boy. A really cute boy, who is alone with you in your apartment, and his eyes are looking everywhere but at yours and you can’t tell if it’s because he’s as flustered as you are or if he’s looking for a way out of this conversation. You’re so busy contemplating this that you forget you’re supposed to give him an answer, until he coughs uncomfortably.

“History. I’m studying history,” you say with what you hope passes for an amiable smile.

“Cool.” He resumes his examination of the living room, but as he works he adds, “What do you want to do with it?”

“If I had a dollar for every time I got asked that,” you say, and this time your laugh is genuine. He laughs too, and you feel your nerves ease a bit.

“I understand that. I’m twenty years old and people  _ still _ ask me when I’m going to go to school,” he says, rolling his eyes. He straightens up from where he’d been examining behind the TV and motions toward your bedroom door. “That your room?”

“How’d you know?” you ask, feeling a blush creep up your face.

“The girls who live here are kind of notorious. This isn’t my first visit.” He smirks. “But I’ve never seen you around before.”

“O-oh, yeah,” you stammer. “I’m just subleasing for the summer. I promise I’m not one of those tenants who breaks stuff all the time.”

“Darn,” he says, “I was hoping for an excuse to see you again.”

Your heart drops. Did he just-?

“Well, my roommates break stuff all the time. So you’ll probably be back lots,” you say with a choked laugh. Holy shit, you are bad at this.

He smiles sweetly. “Okay, well, this area looks fine. I’ll just check the bathroom and then get out of your hair.”

“Right.” You plaster what you hope is a normal-looking smile on your face and follow him down the hallway. Then you remember your fall earlier, and the mess still in the bathroom- but it’s too late, he’s already reached the door-

“Shit,” he says. “What happened here?”

“Lost a battle with the shower curtain,” you admit.

He laughs, then suddenly looks concerned. “Are you alright? Earlier, you-”

“Just a little banged up.” You force a laugh. “I’ve survived worse, trust me.”

He doesn’t seem like he entirely believes you, but he doesn’t push the matter. “I can fix it, if you want,” he offers.

You hesitate before replying. Should you say yes? If he stays to fix the shower curtain then you could stay and talk with him some more, and the longer he’s here the more you want to get to know him. But if you ask him to help with such an easy task, he might think you’re some kind of helpless wimp. Or worse, some preening diva who relies on everyone else to do any kind of physical labor.

Fuck, you’re doing it again. You’re overanalyzing and now he’s staring at you like he’s searching for an escape. You force your lips into a grateful smile that probably looks more like a pained grimace and manage, “Thanks, that would be great.”

He returns your smile, though with a degree of hesitation that wasn’t there before, and now you’re ready to throttle yourself for being so awkward with this guy you’ve known for less than ten minutes.

As he sets about repairing the shower, you take a seat on the edge of the counter to watch him. “So, what do you do? Besides, you know, helping your uncle,” you ask.

He doesn’t look right at you, but you’re positive he winces. “I, uh,” he stutters. “I mostly work from home.”  
“What kind of work?”

“Computer… stuff.”

“Oh.” You look down at the tile floor, then back at him and are surprised to see his face is bright red. “What kind of computer stuff?” you pry.

He shrugs. “Actually, ah… this is kind of embarrassing to talk about.” He gives a wry laugh. “I actually make videos on YouTube.”

“Dude, no way,” you exclaim. “Me too!”

“Really?” He looks up from his work and the smile he gives you is sincere. “What kind of videos do you make?”

“Mostly history stuff.” You hesitate before breaking out the g-word, but fuck it, why the hell not. “I focus a lot on ghosts, and things. Like the paranormal.”

“Is that why you came to Emeryville?” he asks.

You raise your eyebrows. “How did you know I’m not from Emeryville?”

“You haven’t used the word ‘y’all’ once in the fifteen minutes I’ve known you,” he smirks.

You stick your tongue out at him. “Neither have you!”

“‘Cause I’m not from here, either. I’m from New England.”

Your mouth drops. “You’re kidding. So am I!”

“Seriously? What part?”  
“New Hampshire. Just outside of Manchester. You?”

“I grew up in Portland, Maine!”

“Dude.” You can’t help the excited smile that comes to your face. “Is this a fucking coincidence or what?”

“I know!” He takes off his beanie to reveal a pouf of electric blue hair. He runs his hand through it almost subconsciously, and you feel your chest contract a bit.

“This is wild,” you chuckle.

“Small world, right?” He smiles again and then returns to his work. It’s not a terribly complex task, but you can see that he’s taking his time. It occurs to you that he might be drawing this out just so he can spend more time with you, and the thought makes your heart quicken.

“Would you like some water, or something?” you blurt. “Because it’s, you know, hot. Outside.”

There’s a pause and he’s probably thinking the same thing you are- that it’s about twenty degrees cooler in the air-conditioned apartment than it is outside. You start to mentally smack yourself, but the unbothered look on his face makes your brain hold back your metaphorical hand.

“Water would be great, thanks,” he says with a smile that brings a pleasant flush to your skin. You slide off the counter and depart with an awkward half-wave.

Inside the kitchen, away from the heat of his dazzling smile, you press your forehead against the fridge door and take a calming breath. It’s actually fairly embarrassing how worked up you’re getting over some guy who’s practically a stranger. How do you even know that what he’s telling you is the truth? It’s not like you asked for an ID or anything- for all you know he could be an axe murderer or a jewelry thief or something. Yet, there is a part of you that knows he isn’t lying to you. You just trust him.

You remove the towel from your head and hang it over the back of a chair. As you get the glasses from the cabinet and reach into the freezer for the ice cube tray, you recall a quote you read somewhere. You can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something like-  _ When you view the world through rose-colored lenses, all the red flags just look like flags _ . You thought it was pretty profound at the time. Surely it doesn’t apply now, though. Ethan is sweet, and kind, and barely gives off anything even resembling a flag, much less a red one.

This metaphor is getting you nowhere.

You pop some ice cubes out of the tray into the glasses and remember to fill the empty spaces with water before you put it back. Your roommate almost never fills them, but you’re determined to take the high road with her. Especially seeing as stooping to her level does nothing but bring more fruit flies.

You replace the tray and close the freezer door. You reach for the drinks, but as your hand touches the cool glass you feel something brush along the base of your spine. You pause, holding your breath, and it comes again- barely there, but a certain, deliberate movement against your back. Fingers. A hand trails across your lower back and stops at your waist.

You gasp as the fingers suddenly dig into your skin. A strong torso presses against your body from behind and another hand traces gentle circles up your side that send shivers through your entire being. Warm breath grazes your ear and sets your nerve endings ablaze.

“Did you miss me?”

The hand that had been brushing soft shapes against your skin suddenly contracts, nails pressing into your side and drawing a pained cry from your lips. You grit your teeth and muster what tries to be a ferocious hiss, but comes out a pathetic whine. A chuckle thrums through your attacker’s chest. You force your mind away from the pleasant sparks starting up in your abdomen and tighten your grip on the water glass in your right hand.

You whirl around with a grunt of effort as you tear yourself from his hold and aim the glass at his face. In a fraction of a second, his hands shoot out to trap your wrists against the countertop and the glass goes flying past him, slamming against the wall with a tinkling of shattered glass. You barely even register the sound, however, because the face in front of yours sends cold fear straight to your toes.

“E-Ethan?”

It’s nearly the same person with whom you’d been laughing and talking just moments before, almost exactly- except in place of hazel pupils, his eyes are nothing but a blank white. At the sound of his name, his lips quirk into an unpleasant smirk.

“Not quite,” he purrs.

Against your rational desire, his voice sends electric shocks through your blood vessels, and you’re suddenly hyper-aware of his hips pressing unabashedly against yours. His smirk grows wider as a flush rushes to your cheeks.

“Aw. You like him, don’t you?” he teases.

You snort. “I barely know him. You, however, I’ve had more than enough of, thank you very much.”

He sticks his lip out in a fake pout. “You’re so mean to me,” he murmurs. He lets go of one of your wrists to cup your face in one hand. The feel of his thumb brushing against your cheeks is more enjoyable than you’d like to admit.

You shrug as nonchalantly as you can manage with your every fiber ablaze with unwanted longing. “Most people don’t take too kindly to weird dead guys who threaten them with murder.”

“Oh, you know I’d never  _ really _ hurt you,” he says.

With your newly freed hand you point to the scratch on your neck. “Really? So this was, what, a sign of affection?”

The smile melts from his face, and even though full daylight streams through the kitchen window, you swear his eyes are  _ glowing _ . The hand on your cheek moves to twine his fingers in your hair. You hold your breath as he leans forward and presses his lips to the juncture between your throat and shoulder and begins to suck. Little flurries of heat erupt from the spot where his lips meet your skin and you have to bite your lip to keep from moaning aloud.

He plants hot, slow kisses along your neck that are sure to leave it purple-blue, ending at the cut on your throat. He pauses, then bites down hard enough that you’re sure he reopened the wound and you can’t hold back a cry, of pain or delight you can’t be certain. His other hand tightens on your waist at the sound and you can hear his breathing becoming ragged. Is it possible he’s as affected by this as you? You give an experimental roll of your hips against his and he sucks in a breath, pressing you more tightly against the counter.

Much as you hate to admit it, that’s pretty damn hot.

He rakes one hand through your hair and moves the other from your wrist to your back. With both your hands free, you wrap your arms around his waist and trace your nails along his spine in slow patterns that have him grinding into your hips and nipping at your jaw. You give a soft moan as he teases your neck with lips and teeth, and this time it’s genuine. The sound draws a shudder from his very core.

His lips leave your skin with a wet  _ smack _ and he brings both his hands up to cup your face. His blank eyes stare into your own E/C ones and an animalistic need rises within you like a howl. Your hand knots in the front of his shirt and you pull him toward you in a violent kiss.

The movement is awkward and kind of painful, but the two of you quickly adjust to the position of your mouths. The feeling is warm and weird and oh so totally  _ hot _ . His tongue slides between your lips and your apprehension melts away as something much grander and sweeter overtakes you. Things that you’d thought sounded stupid in romance novels suddenly make perfect sense. All you want is to be closer to him, to press against him until the two of you are nothing but bone and ash in the fire of your passion.

His hands leave your hair to gouge long lines in your back. You moan softly into his mouth and bite down hard on his lower lip, which makes him groan with need. The hand gripping his shirt slides up his chest to brush his neck and pull him further into the kiss, while the other rests just above the waistband of his jeans. You allow your fingertips to brush the plane of his firm abs, making him whine and roll his hips. Waves of pleasure roll through you when his pelvis connects with yours.

You drag one finger over the front of his jeans and his breath leaves him in a low hiss. He bucks his hips and moves to press his mouth to yours again, but you draw back with a smirk. The desperation in his face gives you a heady thrill, knowing how much control you have over him. You move your other hand to his face, brushing your thumb over his cheek, and he leans into the touch. Seeing the pleased expression on your face, his lips contort in a snarl, but you smooth your palm over the bulge in his pants and the sound becomes a needy whine.

“Fuck, Y/N,” he gasps, “you’re such a fucking tease.”

“Sounds like someone else I know,” you reply with a smirk.

He grits his teeth but doesn’t say anything more. You see his eyes dart to your neck, and you remember the cut which is probably bleeding again.

“You’re a sick motherfucker, you know that?” you chuckle.

“Mm. I love it when you talk dirty,” he purrs.

Your hand returns to tangle in his blue hair and you yank him back toward you for another kiss. His lips react with aggressive enthusiasm, pressing with bruising force as his fingers dig into your back. To admit that you’re enjoying this would be to admit a loss of control, but as his tongue works against yours you find yourself not actually caring. His lips find their way to your throat and start sucking on the bloody cut, and you allow a breathy moan to escape at the same time that you press against his clothed crotch. He emits a strangled gasp and shudders against you, his hands leaving your body to brace himself against the counter as he kneads your skin with his teeth and whispers a soft string of pleas against your neck.

“Say it,” you gasp, trying to sound authoritative even as you can feel reality splintering from the force of your feverish need.

“Say what?” he hums into your skin.

“Beg for it.” You emphasize the command with a slow drag of your hips against his pelvis, making him choke out a gasp.

His mouth stills against your neck and for a moment you fear you’ve pushed him too far, that this is the point where his pride overcomes his desire. Then he drags his teeth across the shell of your ear and whispers,

“ _ Please _ .”

White heat fries your brain cells at the simple pleasure from that single word. You hide your excitement, however, and bringing your hands to his shoulders for leverage, you spin and shove him against the refrigerator. The pain of his loss is only brief as you’re back on him, teasing his neck with lips and tongue and teeth, taking pride in the knowledge that the bruises which will blossom there will be your doing. Your hands slide under his shirt and he pulls back from you for just a moment to shuck the offending article to the side. You use one hand to anchor yourself against him as you trail a stream of bites and kisses across his torso. He groans and tangles his fingers in your hair, and you let him, for the moment.

Then you’re on your knees on the kitchen floor and looking up at his flushed and desperate face, you feel like you’re going to explode. Still, you want to make it as torturous as possible for him. You start at the opening of his thighs and drag your tongue upward along the bulge. The fabric tastes dry and unpleasant, but the sensation makes Ethan’s head snap back against the freezer and he lets out a sharp whine. His hands tighten in your hair as you slowly undo his jeans and shove them to his knees. He pauses to kick them off and then gives a sharp gasp as you brush your tongue over his briefs. You continue to tease him over his underwear and can feel your own arousal growing at all the beautiful sounds you’re drawing out of him.

Finally, you decide he’s been patient enough. You look up into his eerily blank eyes as you hook your thumbs in the waistband of his briefs, and he bites his lip as he watches you. You slide the underwear down and then you’re eye level with his cock, hard and twitching with need. Ethan seems to hold his breath as your hand brushes the length of it, getting a solid grip on the base. Then you draw your tongue along the underside in a wide stripe from base to tip, and he’s gone. His head slams back against the freezer and his spine arches, but he manages not to thrust his hips too violently, for which you are grateful.

You wrap your lips around the tip and suck slowly, getting used to the feeling. It’s a lot weirder than you’d thought it would be. It doesn’t feel like how penises are described in erotic novels, with all their “pulsating members” and shit. It just feels like another arbitrary body part. It’s thicker than you anticipated and your mouth aches a bit from stretching to accommodate it. You have to keep your teeth tucked into your lips which makes you feel like you look kind of silly, but when you glance up and see Ethan’s face contorted in pleasure, you forget about how you look. You just want to keep making him moan like this.

“Y/N, please,” he groans. “I need it… faster. Please.”

You oblige as best you can. It’s a really weird feeling and it takes a few minutes to get used to the bobbing motion of your head, but it gets easier as you go on. Your hand strokes what you can’t get to, eliciting low moans from his lips. With your other hand you reach up and slowly massage his balls, causing him to gasp and jerk his hips. Suddenly his cock is thrust much farther than you’re prepared for and you jerk back, coughing and gasping for air.

“The hell was that?” you snap.

“I’m sorry,” he whines. “I’m so sorry, it just felt so good. Please don’t be angry with me…”

You roll your eyes. Uncomfortable as that was, you’re still unbelievably turned on at the sight of him trembling in front of you. You take him in your mouth again, but more slowly, keeping your head still and trailing your tongue along the underside of his cock. He groans and his hands return to your hair, but you slap them away. He settles for pressing back against the cool metal of the refrigerator and spilling desperate moans into the air.

You remove your mouth and he lets out a desperate whine. You smirk.

“Tell me what you want,” you murmur. When he doesn’t answer, you bite into his inner thigh, not bothering to soothe it with a kiss.

“Jesus fuck, Y/N,” he mutters.

“Tell me.”

“Now who’s the sick motherfucker?”

You respond by licking along the underside of his cock, and his breath leaves him in a desperate gasp. “God, alright,” he groans.

His hands clench as your tongue teases his slit. “Fucking hell, that feels good,” he moans. “Your mouth feels so  _ fucking  _ good. I want your mouth on my cock. I want you to take it all. I want to fuck your face and hear you make all those pretty sounds.” He gasps as you take him into your mouth and moan softly, sending pleasant vibrations through him.

“I want you to moan for me. I want you to moan and beg for my cock,” he continues. “I want you on your knees, letting me thrust in your mouth until I hit your fucking throat, and you beg for me to cum all over that pretty face of yours-  _ fuuuck _ .” He groans as your tongue finds his frenulum and traces the length of it. “Oh god, Y/N, you  _ fucking tease _ ,” he hisses. You look up at him with widened fake-innocent eyes and he snorts.

“I don’t know whether to be angry or turned on by how quickly you got the upper hand, but congrats,” he says.

“Years of practice,” you joke.

He snorts again. “Uh-huh, sure. I could tell from the moment I saw you that you’re a virgin. You’ve gotta be so wet right now.” He makes sure you don’t miss the way his eyes flick to the cut on your throat and licks his lips. “You have no idea how much I’ve thought about this. You on your knees, choking on my cock, getting so wet just from sucking me off.” He takes a shuddering breath as you start bobbing your head again, forcing yourself to take in as much of him as you can.

“I wanna ruin you,” he groans. “God, the thought of being the first one to get you off besides your own fingers… Maybe I’ll make you touch yourself for me. Touch yourself until you’re so close, so I can be the one to rip you apart.”

You’re kind of unnerved by how hot this is. But then, you’re also sucking a ghost’s dick in your kitchen, so normalcy is kind of relative right now.

Ethan’s hips begin to jerk slightly, and you don’t stop him even as your eyes begin to water from the pain of his cock thrusting farther into your mouth and making it difficult to breathe. “Oh, fuck, that would be hot,” he continues. “Or maybe I won’t let you touch yourself at all. Tie you up and make you come with just my tongue on your clit. Make you beg for it, beg for my cock, beg for my come in your mouth.”

His words are becoming shakier as his pleasure builds. His hands move back to your hair and you don’t resist as he tightens his fingers in the strands. It’s difficult enough figuring out how to breathe while you’re choking on his cock. His voice devolves into a stream of desperate moans and whines, hips thrusting as he seeks friction and release.

“Fuck,” he howls. “Fuck, Y/N, shit, I’m gonna come.  _ Fuck _ …”

You try to pull off him, but he gives a shout and then something warm and salty bursts in your mouth. You try to swallow it around his gradually slowing thrusts as he chases the high of his orgasm, finally pulling out and plopping onto the floor next to you.

“Fuck, that was fun,” he says with a cheeky grin. He reaches toward you and flicks a thumb over your lip, catching a stray drop of cum. “Missed a spot,” he says, then pops the digit in his mouth.

“You’re a fuckin’ weirdo, you know that?” you reply.

“Mm, but I’m a sexy weirdo, yeah?” He gives you a sultry wink.

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a hunk and a half. Now are you going to help me with this, or am I going to have to do it myself?” you ask, gesturing to your own burning crotch.

He smirks and leans forward, kissing your lips slowly, lazily. His tongue flicks into your mouth and elicits a soft gasp from you. He trails a hand up your calf, pausing just beneath the hem of your shorts before breaking off the kiss.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he murmurs.

Suddenly, his body stiffens up and he gives a choked gasp. You jerk back as his limbs begin to tremble violently. His head whips back with such a loud  _ crack _ that you’re sure for a moment it must have killed him, and you’re halfway to your feet to call an ambulance when he collapses and goes still.

You wait for several breathless seconds as he lies unmoving. It’s an eternity before he lets out a pained groan and begins to stir. When he sits up, however, you can see he’s changed.

“What the fuck-?” Ethan runs a hand through his now-thoroughly mussed hair. His eyes have returned to their normal shade of pale bluish-green. He looks down at his naked form and throws his hands up in frustration.

“God dammit,” he cries.

“Uh, Ethan?”

He jumps, seeming to notice you for the first time, and a sheepish blush colors his cheeks. “Hey, Y/N,” he says meekly. “So, I’ve got something to tell you…”


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You start to confront the fact that you might (definitely) have a tiny (major) crush on a boy possessed by a malevolent spirit.

If you’d thought things had been awkward when Ethan had bumped into you in just a towel, they got a hell of a lot worse after a ghost possessed his body and you gave him a blowjob.

You sit on opposite sides of the living room, he perching at the edge of the armchair and fidgeting like he’d rather be anywhere else in this moment, you huddled on the far end of the sofa trying not to look like you’re ogling the blossoming hickies on his neck. Yes, despite everything, you can’t deny your attraction to him, or the lingering high from your brief encounter minutes before.

Two water glasses sit untouched on the coffee table. After Ethan had come to, you’d cleaned up the shards of broken glass while he had gone into the bathroom to get dressed. After you’d emptied the debris into the trash can, you hadn’t known what else to do but pour another glass. Your adolescence had taught you next to nothing about how to be a proper host, but making good on your drink offer had felt like the best thing to do at the time.

Now the ice is melting in your waters as the silence grows between the two of you and the condensation is beginning to form rings on the battered wood. Maybe you should have put them on something. Not that the table is worth saving, or that you own anything resembling a coaster, but the quiet is making you antsy and your brain is fixating on the table to avoid thinking about the most obvious thing in the room.

“So,” he says at last. Your eyes snap to his and the two of you hold one another’s gaze for the briefest moment before you look away again.

“So,” you echo. It feels weird not looking at him, but neither does it feel right to meet his eyes again, so you fixate on a spot behind him, just above his shoulder. He runs a hand through his hair and clears his throat.

“You’re probably pretty confused,” he offers.

You shrug. “I mean, kind of? The possession part I pretty much understand- that’s kind of my shtick, you know? But the rest of it…”

He laughs a little, and the sound dissolves a bit of the tension. “I never really knew what to call it, but… yeah, possession sounds about right.”

“So this has been going on for some time?” you ask.

“Yep, almost a year now,” he replies.

Your mouth gapes with an audible  _ pop  _ and your gaze jerks to him directly. “You mean you’ve had a sentient paranormal entity in your body for almost a  _ year _ , and you haven’t experienced any negative consequences?” you cry.

He rears back some at the sudden energy in your response. “Well, I wouldn’t say there haven’t been consequences,” he says. “I sometimes lose consciousness for I don’t know how long, maybe seconds, sometimes hours. Never more than that, though. It’s like I blink and the world just… keeps spinning without me in it.”

“Do you ever experience any physical symptoms? Hair loss, fluctuation in weight, excessive fatigue, inexplicable bruising-” You pause when you notice Ethan is visibly leaning away from you, and you mentally rein yourself in. “Sorry, sorry,” you interject. “It’s just, I’ve never met  _ anyone  _ who’s experienced such a long-term possession, never mind witnessed the transition. I can get kind of enthusiastic about that stuff.”

He smiles and relaxes slightly. “Don’t apologize. I think it’s cool that you have something that you’re passionate about. And I’d love to answer all your questions, but I actually have to go. My uncle’s probably waiting for me.”

“Oh, right. Another time then. I’ll walk you out,” you offer. He smiles and follows you to the door.

In the front hallway he puts a hand on your arm and you turn around, heart racing madly. “Before I go,” he says, “why don’t you put your number in my phone? We can grab coffee or something and I’ll tell you about the whole possession thing.”

“Sure,” you say in a voice way more cheerful than the occasion probably allows. Screw it. He’s cute, nice, and a fantastic kisser, and probably almost definitely into you, so why the hell should you act like you’re not excited?

He smiles and offers his phone. You type your number in and hand it back to him. He frowns at the screen for a moment, then types something else.

“What did you just write?” you ask. You try to see his phone but he holds it over your head, laughing. You jump for it but he’s holding it up too high for you to reach.

“Sorry, what was that? I can’t hear you down there,” he laughs.

You make another grab for the phone and this time manage to snag it. Before he can take it back you glance at the screen and the contacts list, where your info is written- and next to your name, he’s put a bunch of ghost emojis.

“You’re a jerk,” you snort, handing him back the phone. He looks at you with such a goofy smile that you can’t help smiling back.

The two of you jump at a sudden rattling noise from outside. The front door swings open and your roommate appears, lugging a bulging messenger bag. “Y/N, you home? I saw-” She pauses abruptly in the front hall as she takes in the two of you. Her face splits into an excited grin.

“ _ Heeeeey _ , Ethan!” she squeals.

“Hey.” He gives her an awkward half-wave.

“Thank you  _ so much _ for coming today. These flies have been driving us crazy. Right, Y/N?” she gushes, kicking the door closed behind her.

You give a nervous cough. “Yeah, right,” you agree.

“So did you figure out the problem?” she asks as she heads past you into the kitchen.

“Yeah, just some rotting food. They should go away if you clean it up. But, uh,” his eyes dart from her to you, “let me know if they don’t and I can just check back in a few days.”

“Of course! We love having you around,” she says.

“Cool. So, I’ll see you later?” The way he asks the question seems to be directed at nobody in particular, but the way his gaze meets yours makes your heart stutter.

“See ya,” you say, holding the door open for him.

As soon as he’s gone, your roommate abandons her task in the kitchen and whirls around. “You guys totally did it,” she squeals.

You open your mouth to protest, but her abruptness throws off your wit. “We didn’t have sex, if that’s what you mean,” you reply.

“Obviously.” She rolls her eyes. “But you did  _ something _ , right? Your neck looks like it was attacked by a chinchilla.”

“Specifically a chinchilla?”

“Shut up and  _ spill _ .”

“At the same time?”

“Oh my god.” She throws her arms up and heaves a long-suffering groan.

You laugh as you pull out a chair from the dining table and plop down. “Why are you so weirdly invested in my sex life?”

“Because he’s cute and handsome and  _ so  _ your type,” she exclaims. She kicks off her shoes and heaves herself onto the counter. “Did you get his number, at least?”

“Well, technically he asked for mine, but-”

“Ohmygod!” she shrieks, bouncing excitedly.

You roll your eyes, although your heart skips at the memory. “It’s just a friend thing. He’s probably not even into me like that. I bet he has a girlfriend, anyway.”

“Trust me, he doesn’t. And he is  _ so _ into you. Did you see how he didn’t even look at me when he said goodbye?”

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s into him.”

“Ew. Like, no offense, but no. I’m just a very observant matchmaker.”

“Well, you’re clearly a terrible one, because he does not like me. I bet we don’t even have anything in common.”

“Sure you do! You both do YouTube stuff. You’re both from up north. And… probably a bunch of other things.”

“Yeah, sure. He asked me for coffee so we can talk about YouTube and snowstorms for three hours.”

“Oh my  _ god _ , Y/N, you are so freaking dense!” she cries. “It isn’t that complicated. He likes you, you like him, he asked you on a date, you’re gonna get married and have seventeen babies and grow old together on a farm.”

You rise from your chair. “Alright, I’m done here. Have fun making plans for  _ my _ dating life. I need to do some work.”

As you head down the hall, she calls after you, “You can thank me by naming your first-born after me.”

You roll your eyes, but you can’t help the smile that twinges at your lips.

 

***

 

By the following day, the monotony of staying home has gotten so unbearable that you’re actually relieved when your boss calls to ask you to fill in for a last-minute pirate tour. Once you’re standing at the marina decked out in full costume and already starting to sweat under your leather tricorn, however, you’re feeling far less optimistic.

“Ahoy, mateys,” you address the tour group, inwardly cringing at the cheesy script. “Welcome to Emeryville, home to some o’ the fiercest scallawags to ever sail the seven seas. Today I’ll be showin’ ye the sites of the most infamous pirate encounters on the Carolina coast…”

An hour and a half later, you finally arrive at the drop-off point and wave your “crew” off to their air-conditioned SUVs, sweat running down your face but your pockets stuffed with fivers. When the group has finally departed, you duck into an enclosed side street and lean against the wall, enjoying the brief reprieve offered by the shade. You remove your tricorn and use it to fan yourself, though it does little more than nudge the sluggish heat around a bit.

“That’s a nice sword. Think you could use it on me?”

You jump at the unexpected voice, as you’d thought the street was empty aside from yourself, and your head jerks toward the source. The last person you’d expected to be standing there was Ethan. Though, given the obnoxious parasite infesting his body, you shouldn’t be too surprised.

“I’m gonna assume that I’m not talking to Ethan right now,” you say.

He grins and takes a step toward you, hands shoved in the pockets of his shorts and the fringe of his hair casting a shadow over his face. This close you notice that his irises are their usual blue-gray, though a bit paler than normal, and you wonder if he can control their appearance.

“You’d be more or less correct. Though it’s getting harder to tell these days.” The smile on his face is anything but kind, and you hate the way it stirs flurries of excitement in your gut. “So I heard you’re interested in asking me a few questions.”

“I want to ask  _ Ethan _ a few questions. You can buzz off for all I care,” you reply

He quirks an eyebrow, unfazed. “Like I said. We’re one and the same.”

“Don’t bullshit me, dude,” you snort. “Ethan is a  _ nice guy _ . You’re not.”

“You’ve barely spent twenty minutes with the fellow. You and I, however,” he smirks, “we’ve got a connection.”

“Oh, really? So why did you disappear the second you got to cum and leave me in literally the most awkward situation of my life?”

He twitches, as if put off by your abruptness, then gives a low chuckle and moves toward you again. “Sorry about that, love,” he says. The nickname makes your stomach do obnoxious flips. “Want me to make it up to you now?”

Before you can react, he’s caged your body against the wall and and slid one leg between your thighs. His lips brush the side of your neck and you swallow a whimper. He trails one hand up your side, then cups your chin and tilts it to meet your eyes.

“Let me show you how sorry I am,” he whispers.

Shit, he’s really good at this. Still, tempting as his body feels against yours, you’re on a public street in the middle of the day. Plus, your outfit is soaked with sweat and you want nothing more than to go back to the office to change out your costume for your normal clothes.

You press your hands against his shoulders and reluctantly push him away. “Charming as I find your company,” you say, “I really need to get back to the office to return this costume before I actually melt.”

“Then it’s simple,” he says, drawing back as if nothing had happened. “I’ll walk you over to your place and answer your questions on the way, then we can fool around.”

“Wow. Okay, first off, no one over the age of fifteen actually calls it ‘fooling around’, so that’s strike one,” you say. “Second- no.”

“Aw, come on,” he whines. He reaches for your waist but you pull back and start toward the main street, Ethan following a step behind. “It’ll be fun. I’m really curious to see where you work.”

“I’m very sure you are.”

He jogs to your side and takes your hat from your hand, placing it on his own head. “C’mon, Captain. How can you resist this face?” he teases.

Your heart gives a slight jolt as he grins goofily and strikes a pose. As you look at him, you start to understand what he said earlier, about he and Ethan being the same person. Obviously they’re two different people on the inside, with completely different personalities and mannerisms, but the fact that they share a body makes it almost impossible to tell which is which just at a glance. And right now, his external appearance is doing wonders for the butterflies twisting your stomach.

It feels wrong to think of Ethan and this… ghost? demon? whatever- as being the same person. Ethan is sweet and shy and funny and kind and nothing like the possessive, knife-happy jerk who can’t seem to stop popping into your life at the most inconvenient moments. Still, he was right about at least one thing- you’ve spent way more time with him than with Ethan, if that makes sense. While you’d deny to your grave that you have any kind of  _ connection _ with this asshole, it’s pretty objectively clear that there is a certain element of… companionship present in your bickering, something more than just well-matched wits.

“You really want to answer my questions?” you say.

He claps his hands and rubs them together. “Fire away, Cap’n,” he replies.

You take a breath and put your paranormal investigator face on, squashing the butterflies and channeling your focus into the job. “Okay,” you say, “how about something easy. What’s your name?”

He snickers. “You mean my birth name, or my real name?”

“Um-”

“Either way, I couldn’t give you an answer even if I wanted to. I don’t remember anything about who I was before.”

“Really? What do you remember?”

His face creases in discomfort and you’re about to retract your question when he gives an uneasy shrug. “Not a whole lot. It comes and goes. Sometimes I have this weird kinda deja-vu feeling, or I get flashes of sensation- smells or tastes- but nothing concrete.” He shrugs again. “I try not to think about it too much, actually.”

“That’s fine,” you say. “Next question- how did you end up in the jail?”

“I wasn’t a prisoner there, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he smirks. He runs a hand through his hair and the movement reminds you so much of Ethan you feel a small pang, but you shove it aside.

“Well, what’s your earliest memory of the place?”

“Hmm. That’s a tough one. Definitely before it was bought by the architectural school,” he says. He bites his lip in thought. “Maybe a few years before that? I don’t know, time didn’t really hold much weight for me before I met Ethan.”

Now you’re getting to the real juicy stuff. You really wish you’d brought your voice recorder. “Tell me about that.”

“Aw, he’s boring.” He elbows you playfully. “I’d rather talk about how I met you.”

Blood rushes to your cheeks and you cover it up with a derisive snort. “Right. When you busted my equipment and scared the absolute shit out of me.”

“Hey, you came back, right?”

“Only for my cell phone.”

He frowns. “You know, I never really understood the point of those things. I’d hate to have to carry around a little box that just blinks and buzzes at me all day.”

You can’t help a condescending giggle. “Do you… not know how to use a cell phone?” you ask.

He stiffens and you can see his mouth set in a defensive line. “I don’t need to know how to use it to know that it’s completely useless to me,” he replies.

“Oh, my god. So what do you do with Ethan’s phone when you’re in control?” you say.

“Usually throw it into the nearest gutter.”

Your mouth drops open. “You do not!”

“It’s always back in my pocket when I wake up again, so clearly it’s not that much of an inconvenience for him.”

You shake your head in horror. “Poor Ethan,” you sigh.

“Poor Ethan? Poor me! I’m the one who has to put up with that dork’s boring-ass life,” he cries.

“So why don’t you just possess someone else?”

“It’s not that simple. It’s not like I just jumped into his body one day and decided to take control. Look, it’s like this.” He makes both his hands into fists. “This is Ethan’s soul, and this is my soul.” He smashes his fists together. “This is my soul feeding on the emotional energy emitted by Ethan’s soul.” He covers his right fist with his left hand. “And this is our souls merging in the same vessel.”

“So you’re like some weird dementor?”

“A what?”

“Never mind.”

You’re nearly to the main office, so you try to focus your questions down. “Okay, so your soul is basically like a parasite that sucks up emotions?”

“I’m more like a sponge that is particularly susceptible to strong emotions.” He shrugs. “I don’t really pry into Ethan’s subconscious too often, but the gist of it is, something happened to him that made his spirit mentally vulnerable while in close proximity to my soul, and the state of his emotions attracted me. Like a magnet.”

“Uh-huh. So you can sense emotions?” you ask.

“But of course.” He winks. “For instance, I can sense right now that you’re trying really hard not to rip my clothes off and slam me against the wall.”

“Please. I’m a professional,” you say, but you can’t ignore the way your heart starts a heady rhythm in your chest.

You stop outside the narrow alley leading to the front door of your workplace. “Well, this is me,” you say. He doesn’t respond, just stands with his hands in his pockets, looking down at you from beneath his blue floof. You hold out a hand to shake, and he merely cocks an eyebrow quizzically.

You roll your eyes and fiddle in your bag for your key. The gate creaks behind the two of you as Ethan follows you into the alley. It’s blessedly cool in the little stone breezeway between the office buildings, and you let out a pleased sigh. Fingertips brush across your lower back and your breath hitches, but you don’t let him see that you’ve noticed.

No one else is in the office right now, everyone else on a tour or home for the day. You’re not sure whether to be relieved that you don’t have to explain Ethan’s presence or nervous that there’s no one around to serve as a buffer.

“Wait here,” you instruct him. He obediently flops down in one of the chairs by the front desk, and you head off into a side room. Rows of costumes hang from every surface, from neat metal racks or hangers attached to the pipes on the ceiling. You duck into the back of the room, where an ornate divider provides a relatively private space to change, and begin to doff your costume pieces.

First go the heavy leather boots, the air remarkably cool on your sweaty feet. Next is the harness, followed by the pistol and scabbard. Your hand lingers on the hilt of the cutlass, recalling your earlier encounter, but you shove that thought aside and set the weapon on the ground. Next is the hat- aaaaand you forgot to take it back from Ethan after he nabbed it. You sigh and turn toward the lobby, but you find your path blocked by a shadowed figure.

Cool stone presses into your back as he shoves you against the wall. He catches your gasp of surprise in his lips and cups your face in his hands. He kisses you sweetly, hot and needy but verging just on the edge of sentimental. Without thinking you return the kiss with equal fervor, your lips parting eagerly when his tongue presses against them. It’s maddening, the slow dance of his mouth on yours, when all you want is to be  _ closer _ .

You wrap your arms around his waist and pull his body to yours, and he gives a soft gasp. You feel his hips roll against your pelvis over your costume, sending sparks of pleasure through your lower body, but then he draws back from you. He takes your hands in his own and move them from his waist, clasping them between his palms. He leans forward and traps your twined hands between you as he leans his chest against yours. You give an agitated whine and he smiles into your kiss but does not relent.

You’re getting embarrassingly wet just from kissing him, and you think that’s probably his goal. Well, you’re not going to let him have his way just like that. You slow the kiss, letting your tongue linger over his lips, making your pecks small and chaste. He chuckles and tries to force your mouth open with his tongue, but you keep your lips resolutely closed and let out a loud moan to throw him off. It works- a shudder wracks through his chest and he sighs into your skin. You smile against him, then bite down hard on his lower lip.

He emits a sound somewhere between a yelp and a moan and tightens his grip on your hands, renewing his efforts at your lips. You oblige, letting out a breathy moan as you do so that makes him lean against your body. He lets go of your hands to grab your waist and hold you against the wall as he grinds against you, and even through the layers of fabric you feel sweet pleasure run through your veins. He gives a low groan that you swallow with lips and tongue and sweet breath. Your hands go to his hair and you pull his face closer as you continue to kiss him so hard you feel as if you both may explode from desire.

His hands fumble at the hem of your shirt and you can’t help the little snicker at the thought that you can cause him to lose any bit of control with just your body. He snarls and drags his nails up your sides, causing you to let out a needy gasp. He breaks the kiss to tug your shirt over your head and tosses it aside as his lips move to attack your neck. You groan and tighten your fingers in his hair as he teases your skin with bites and kisses that promise to blossom into purple hickies by tomorrow morning. His hands ghost over your stomach, the light sensation causing your torso to contort with pleasant tremors. He undoes the clasp on your bra and before you have time to remove it fully his mouth is on your breast, gently lapping at the nipple while he teases the other with deft fingers. Your head falls back against the wall as you emit a cry of delight and your fingernails carve red lines in his shoulders.

His head moves lower, to the hem of your bottoms, and you feel your already overstimulated heart begin race even more quickly. He presses a burning kiss to your crotch over the fabric and when he locks his eyes on yours, you see that they’re once again a blank milky white. For some reason that causes your arousal to spike and you bite your lip to hold back a moan. He grins at you like he knows exactly what he’s doing to you, which normally would make you want to throttle him, but he’s so close to your core and all you want is his tongue on your clit  _ right the fuck now _ .

He hooks his fingers in the waistline and tugs the article down until you can kick it off, and then you’re left in just your panties. He presses two fingers against the space between the folds of your labia and quirks them upward, causing your body to give an involuntary jerk. Your fingers dig into the wall behind you as you strangle a noisy cry. Your head presses back against the stone and your eyes screw shut as he drags his tongue across the fabric at a torturous pace, fingers digging into the backs of your thighs. You hear him chuckle as a shudder runs through your body and you would smack him if you weren’t so turned on.

“What do you want me to do, love?” he murmurs.

You swallow hard and force yourself to meet his eyes. “You’re not seriously going to make me say it, are you?” you groan.

“It’s only fair.” He gives your thigh a bite that makes you gasp with desire, and you swear you could kill him.

“Fine,” you hiss. “I want you to-  _ fuck _ , I can’t believe I’m doing this.” You take a steadying breath. “I want you to eat me out.”

“Oh, come on, you can do better than that,” he says, smirking against your panties. He’s completely infuriating you right now but his mouth is so close to your crotch and the cocky expression in his face is turning you on way more than it should be and you know you’ve lost before you even open your mouth.

“I want you to- to suck on my clit,” you gasp. “I want to feel your tongue on my c-cunt, lick me until I fall apart.” You suck in a breath as his tongues eases beneath the fabric of your panties. “I want you to tongue fuck me while you rub my clit, make me cum so hard, make me  _ scream _ …”

He groans into your skin and yanks your underwear down. His tongue immediately finds the sweet spot above your opening and you let out a strangled cry at the sudden explosion of pleasure against the bundle of nerves. Your hands dig into the wall, scrabbling for something to hold onto, your breath beginning to come in needy pants. You glance down and see Ethan watching you, and the sight of him on his knees with his face buried in your cunt is almost enough to make you cum right then.

“Fuck, you taste amazing,” he groans, lapping at your arousal. Screeching bells sound in your head, a white haze fogs your brain, and you can tell you’re nearly there. You’re about to warn him when he suddenly draws back, causing you to whine from the loss.

He chuckles and runs a finger over your hip in teasing circles. “Not so fast, love,” he says. “I need to hear you beg some more.”

You groan, more out of arousal than frustration. “Please- fuck, please, I need it.”

“What do you need?” he murmurs. His tongue drags against your clit in a thrumming motion that has you keening against him.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” you moan. “I need you to fuck me. I need to feel you inside me, fuck me so hard I can’t breathe- fuck me until I come so hard-”

“You want to ride my cock?” he murmurs. He holds your gaze as his finger replaces his tongue on your clit. His other hand is hastily unfastening his jeans and you feel a wave of giddiness at the thought of him getting off while he fingers you.

“I want it so badly,” you sigh. “I need your cock, fucking hell,  _ please _ . Need it in me.” Your eyes roll back and your head hits the wall as he presses against your cunt with an especially delicious touch. He’s administering beautiful patterns to your most intimate place, pleasure sparking in your stomach but dwindling right on the knife’s edge of release.

You dare a glance downward and let out a moan at the sight of him, face flushed, blank eyes hard and alluring, his tongue buried in your cunt and his hand stroking his ridiculously hard dick. The sound sends a shudder through his body and he removes his lips with a wet  _ smack _ . Before you can protest he yanks you to the floor with him and kisses you hard, pressing you to the floor as he removes his pants and straddles your lap.

Your fingernails dig into his forearms as he teases your cunt with the tip of his cock, eliciting moans from the both of you. You tangle your fingers in his hair and he digs his fingertips into your thighs, shaking from the effort of keeping himself still while he teases you. He lets out a groan of pleasure when he feels your arousal on his cock, and the sound sends pleasure straight to your core. You gasp and bite down on his lower lip, bucking your hips slightly.

His body goes still, and you fear you’ve done something to upset him. His fingers tighten on your thigh he leans forward, breathing hard against your neck. His teeth barely scrape your skin as he brings his mouth to your ear and whispers, “ _ Do that again _ .”

You roll your hips so that your slick cunt brushes the tip of his cock and tug his face to yours to give his lip another bruising bite. He moans into your mouth, and then his tongue is sliding against yours and his hands are wrenching your thighs apart so he can enter you. He pauses at your entrance, panting against your skin.

“You want my cock inside you?” he chokes out in a ragged whisper.

“Yes, oh god  _ please _ ,” you cry.

He’s much gentler than you had anticipated. Though he trembles with the effort not to thrust immediately, he lets out a strangled groan as he enters you at a reasonable pace. It’s a much tighter fit than you’d expected and you suck in a breath as your muscles stretch to accommodate the new sensation. He pauses and puts a gentle hand on your cheek.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, and his expression is so sweet and concerned you feel your heart flutter.

“A little bit,” you say, “but it helps if you keep moving.”

He nods and starts a slow rocking motion, easing into you a bit at a time. The movement really does help, and the burning stretch gradually turns to a pleasant thrumming. His thumb finds your clit and rubs it in expert circles while his lips find your throat. He presses kisses along your skin, pausing to suck at the thin cut that has already begun to heal from your last encounter. The combination of pleasant shivers from his lips against your skin and the harsh sweetness of his bites makes you whine and buck your hips. Your hands carve bloody lines up his back and tangle in his hair.

Once you’ve both adjusted to the motion of your hips, he starts to quicken his pace, and the sensation pushes you toward something greater. Heat travels outward from your lower abdomen and sparks with every thrust. You unconsciously spread your legs even wider and the angle of your pelvis makes it easier for him to fuck you at this new and delicious pace. He groans loudly and the hand on your clit begins to stutter in its motions.

“Are you close, love?” he whispers.

You hum your agreement, knowing there’s no way you’d be able to speak through the veil of pleasure covering your entire body. To your surprise, he suddenly pulls out of you and shuffles backward. His hands press your thighs as wide as you can comfortably go and his lips return to suck on your slick cunt.

“N-not that I’m complaining,” you choke out, “but w-what are you doing?”

“I promised I’d make it up to you,” he mumbles against you.

Your head slams back against the floor as his thumb finds your clit and rubs it in tight motions. Your hands reach frantically for something to hold onto as you mewl and keen in fits of pleasure. After a short time you’re bucking against his tongue, not caring about anything but the tight heat in your belly and the climax approaching. He pauses briefly in his ministrations to guide your hands to his hair and moans when you tighten your fingers in the wavy blue strands.

The sensation is like a rubber band snapping, like ocean waves crashing, like walking over a mountaintop and finding that there’s nothing but air beneath your feet. Every muscle tenses with pure pleasure and a desperate whine leaves your throat as your head snaps back. It’s a nuclear bomb and a class-8 earthquake, an electric shock that paralyzes your bones as it moves through you and leaves you weak and sore but oh so deliciously  _ full _ .

Ethan collapses on the floor next to you as you lie panting from your high. You lock eyes with him, and though you’re too exhausted to say the words you’re thinking, he understands anyway. He leans forward and presses a gentle kiss to your lips, and a residual wave of arousal sparks in your gut as you taste yourself on his tongue.

He grunts in surprise as you muster the final dregs of your energy and roll on top of him so that you’re straddling his lap. He doesn’t fight it, though, and emits a soft groan as you drag your sensitive folds against his still-hard cock. His fingers claw at your lower back and his lips slide against yours as he jerks his hips, searching for friction.

The sensation sends pleasant flutters of arousal through your abdomen, but you’re not pushing your luck with a second orgasm. He whines when you pull away from him, but when your mouth sinks onto his dick his body contorts in pleasure. You let him tangle his fingers in your hair as you tease the slit with your tongue, then gradually take more and more of it into your mouth. It’s a really awkward angle to do this, with both of you lying on the floor, but you push past the weirdness and hollow your cheeks to accommodate his length.

When his cock brushes your throat and you gag slightly, he gives another needy whine. “Fuck, Y/N,” he gasps, “you feel so  _ fucking _ good choking on my cock.” You allow him to thrust a bit, forcing yourself to breathe through the uncomfortable sensation. Normally this would go against your every instinct, allowing your partner’s desires to overcome your own comfort, but you’re still high off your orgasm and just the sight of Ethan’s face contorted in pure pleasure is nearly enough to send you over the edge again.

You remove your mouth to murmur, “Cum for me, baby.” You accompany the request with an expert lick along his frenulum, and it’s over. He jerks himself off with rapid strokes while you drag your tongue along his slit, and then thin ropes of white cum spill onto your face. You sit up and grab the nearest article of clothing and use it to wipe yourself off while Ethan lies motionless, eyes shut as his chest heaves.

Eyes still closed, he reaches out a hand toward you and you take it. He tugs you to the floor at his side and wraps an arm around your shoulders, and the two of you bask in your post-orgasm glow, completely oblivious of how fucking weird this all is.

And then you hear the dressing room door open.


	6. NOT A CHAPTER (SORRY!)

Sorry if you saw an update and got excited! I just wanted to add an update for those who are waiting on the fifth chapter.

 

First of all, wow. Holy shit. I never expected this fic to get as popular as it has! It started out as some weird ghost smut that I shat out at 3am to distract myself from my finals, and now look at it! I am honestly impressed with myself, and so grateful to everyone who's taken the time to read and give kudos. It's the people who comment about how much they enjoy the fic that keep me going (I'm looking at you, mmitchell40 ;P). Especially since I moved the fic to this new account, I've gotten such positive feedback and I'm really happy with it!

 

Now, as to why it hasn't updated in a while. First, I had to deal with the usual end-of-year college shit, except I had to do a bunch of extra stuff because I was a resident assistant. (On the bright side I got a bunch of cool stuff that residents left behind.) Then I had to move into my summer apartment, and then I went home for a few days, then to Florida to visit my dad for the first time in three years, and since then I've been doing regular adult stuff. Mainly working my three jobs and keeping my roommates from drinking themselves into an early grave. (They're sweet girls but I am probably 85% of their impulse control.) I also have been channeling a lot of my writing energy into my senior capstone proposal which is necessary in order for me to graduate in December, yaaaay. And I've been studying for the tour guide license test. And I run a YouTube channel. And Fallout: New Vegas was $3 on Steam so I've been balls deep in that pretty much every free moment.

 

Besides all of the things keeping me busy, I'm also a filthy millennial, which means I'm very gay, poor, and depressed. Yippee! So I've been dealing with a lot of shit, basically. My health problems have mostly cleared up (knock on wood) but I've been really anxious about a lot of things, mainly not making much money between my jobs and the expense of living in downtown Charleston, and having anywhere to live for the first two weeks of August. BUT! Most of that has been (tentatively) resolved, and things are looking up right now (KNOCK ON WOOD).

 

I know, I know, excuses! But I haven't been entirely unfaithful to you guys! I spent a lot of time on this humongous multi-chapter, choose-your-own-adventure fic Birthday Sex which I posted a few weeks ago. That took a lot out of me, not gonna lie! It takes place in a totally different universe from Ghost Stories, but if you want a little bit of context before you read it, you can read my fic Kiss Me Thru the Phone which is something of a prequel to Birthday Sex. I'm also working on another fic that's a continuation of one of the endings. After that, I have a few other fics that I'm too scared to talk about as I haven't even put pen to paper with them yet, but I'll post them as soon as I actually write them.

 

TL;DR: I've been very busy, I'm sorry, I'll do better from now on, please don't hate me!

 

Currently, Chapter 5 is almost done, but it's in two parts between my computer and my notebook, so I need to fill in the gaps between them and then it will be ready to upload. I've also started on Chapter 6. I have a definite ending in mind and it will be coming within probably 3-4 chapters. So, here is my promise to you: I can't guarantee that I will finish this fic by the end of the summer, but I WILL have the fifth chapter up by this Friday (7/14). I want you guys to hold me to that, okay? I'm doing this for you, after all. I know how much it sucks when you find a really good fic that the author just dropped, so please, PLEASE don't let me become one of those authors. I want to see this through to the end.

 

If you want to see more of my stuff (art, videos, etc), my social media links are in my profile. I'm on Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube (I also have a Patreon wink wink nudge nudge). I also do writing and art commissions so hit me up if you're interested!

 

As always, thank you SO MUCH for reading, and I PROMISE that the next chapter will be up by Friday. I promise. I PROMISE!!!!!


	7. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You and Ethan set about making plans to rid him of his unwanted passenger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit. Wow. This is so late, and I am so sorry, but HERE IT IS!!!! Like I said in the update chapter, I've had so many things come up while I've been working on this chapter, but I'm so proud of myself for getting around to it and it is finally DONE. I've already started on Chapter 6, and while I can't give you a precise upload date, I promise that there won't be as much of a gap between chapters as this last one. I am beyond thrilled by how many people have shown interest in this silly little story that I've actually grown quite attached to.
> 
> Now, I do have an ending in mind, and it will be coming up very soon. Altogether this fic probably won't be more than ten chapters, depends on how much time it takes me to get my act together. I tend to write big so I have trouble getting to the point. But! I hope it will be as fun for you guys as it has been for me to write/plan out. But that's not for a few more weeks at least, so don't worry too much. Enjoy!

You shove yourself off of Ethan and cast about for the nearest article of clothing that isn’t stained with semen. He barks out a laugh and you clap a hand over his mouth.

“Y/N? You back already?” a voice calls. You recognize it as belonging to your boss, Rob.

You grab a cloak hanging from a nearby rack and toss it over Ethan’s naked form. “Just a minute. I’m changing,” you reply. You cast about for someplace to hide your possessed lover, and come up with nothing but trunks full of costume pieces.

Ethan snickers at your distress, perching comfortably with the cloak wrapped around him. You shove him against the wall and grab more clothes from the racks, piling them over him until they conceal him from immediate view.

“Now stay here and  _ be quiet _ ,” you hiss. The pile of colonial wear jiggles in response.

The article you’d grabbed was a pink shift entirely too long for you and you stumble on the hem when you pull yourself up. The Ethan-pile trembles again but does not make a peep. You fix him with a final steely glare before you round the divider and confront your boss.

Rob is a middle-aged man of unassuming build and stature, most of his reddish-brown hair having migrated from the top of his head to his gray-flecked beard. He’s dressed in street clothes and lugging a cardboard box full of pamphlets. When he sees your outfit, he does a slight double-take.

“I thought you just finished a tour?” he says.

“Uh. I did. I just thought that since I was here I could maybe try on Mrs. Heyward’s dress.” You smooth the front of your shift and strike what you hope is a distinguished-looking pose. “How do I look? Think I could pull off a house tour?”

He appraises your outfit with a furrowed brow as he sets down the box. “It’s a bit long for you, isn’t it? And I’m pretty sure Mrs. Heyward is supposed to be closer to forty.”

“Oh. Right. Guess I’ll just take it off, then,” you say. You start for the changing area.

“Wait, before you do that,” he says, “could you help me with the rest of these boxes real quick? My car’s out front and I’m in a no-parking zone.”

“Sure.” You hike up your skirt and follow him outside to the street in front of the office entrance. Together you manage to grab the rest of the boxes and return to the costume room. He starts to unpack them while you duck behind the divider to change into your normal clothes.

The pile where you’d left possessed-Ethan appears unchanged, and you pray that he’ll reign in his mischievous tendencies until you can get rid of Rob. You shrug on your street clothes and when you return to the costume room, your boss is trying to stuff a pile of clothing into a spare box.

“Have you seen the black cloak?” he asks. “I’ve got to bring some costume pieces up to Colonial Winchester and I can’t seem to find it.”  
“Haven’t seen it. Sorry,” you shrug.

“Really? Coulda sworn it was hanging up by the dressing area…” He starts for the spot behind the divider.

“Wait!”

He pauses and turns back to you. You fish about for a reasonable excuse. “Um.” You point to the closet half-hidden behind the refrigerator. “Did you check in there? I’m pretty sure it’s usually hanging up in there.”

“Nah, I was just in there and I didn’t see it,” he replies.

Your heart climbs into your throat as he turns back to the changing area. You hold your breath, waiting to be found out.

“Aha!”

Rob emerges from behind the divider, holding the cloak out triumphantly. “Weird, it was in a pile on the floor,” he says. “But anyway, I’ve gotta bring this stuff over to the office. Can you do me a favor and tidy up the costumes a bit before you head out?”

You nod in confusion, not really hearing him. The second he’s out the door you dart over to the changing space and see the pile of clothes, now upended, and no Ethan around.

Damn him.

 

Your heart lurches in fear as you make your way down Ashley Street in the dark. It’s silly, you know, to suddenly be afraid of something that you’ve faced a hundred times before, but this time is different.

This could be the night that changes everything.

You’re not sure you’re ready.

Ethan squeezes your hand and gives you a smile so full of trust and compassion that your fears ebb a bit. He’s been so amazing through this whole ordeal. You can’t imagine being so calm and understanding if you were in his position, but he hasn’t once made you feel uncomfortable or judged while you’ve worked together to sort this out. Actually, he’d agreed almost enthusiastically when you’d asked if he would come along tonight. You really don’t deserve him.

The day you’d last seen the ghost-- it feels wrong to call him Ethan, but you’re not really sure how else to refer to him-- was about a week ago. You’d tried to contact him after he disappeared, but of course he hadn’t answered his phone. You’d gone home, frightened and wary but unsure what else you could do, and waited for Ethan to get control back.

It had been past midnight when he finally got in touch with you. He’d woken up in an empty parking lot, surprisingly with his cell phone in his pocket, which made you smile. The two of you had made plans to get together and discuss your next steps, and you’d gone to bed that night much more optimistic about the situation.

Now that you’re getting ready to execute your plan, however, you’re feeling a lot less confident. It’s dangerous, you know, playing with this sort of magic. Restless spirits are unpredictable and can become downright vicious when provoked. You have no idea how the ghost will react to what you’re going to try to do.

What makes this so complicated is that you have no idea how conscious he is when he’s not in full possession of Ethan’s body. Ethan himself told you that losing control is like falling into a dreamless sleep-- he opens his eyes and hours have passed with him wholly unaware of what his body was just up to. He can sometimes communicate with the ghost, but it doesn’t resemble a normal conversation. The way he explained it to you, it’s like he sometimes has thoughts that don’t feel like his own; he thinks his response, and so on. Usually he can tell when a thought doesn’t come from him, but other times he’s not entirely sure.

Because of that, the two of you had agreed that you would be the one to come up with a plan and Ethan would just have to follow you as best he could. You don’t know the extent to which his unwelcome passenger can pick up on his thoughts and memories, and you don’t want to risk him discovering your plan before you can act on it. It’s unnerving, knowing that there’s someone else inside his head, possibly watching you and listening to your conversations with Ethan.

Yet, you’ve found that there’s something almost like a fondness for the guy growing inside you. He’s like a weed that’s taken root in your heart, and as much as you want to help Ethan regain control over his body, you’ve stopped shy of any plans that might seriously hurt the ghost. How much of that fondness is tangled up in your affection for Ethan himself, it’s impossible to say, and you’d rather not dwell on it.

The two of you had formed an unspoken bond over the past few days. Neither of you had acknowledged it aloud, but it was there, tenable and soft. It’s been a long while since you’ve felt this way about anyone, and you sometimes get a bit giddy thinking about it. The butterflies. Such a sweet feeling at the start of a relationship. Normally you would be starting to panic at this stage, sure that you’re imagining the lingering gazes and whispered touches, but with Ethan there is no uncertainty. He makes you feel safe, and that’s something rare in your world. He makes you want to tell him all your secrets, like he won’t judge you if you unburden all the emotional baggage you’re afraid to unload on anyone.

Right now, walking with his fingers twined with yours, it’s such an amazing feeling you’re sure you could explode. Your excitement is somewhat diminished, however, when you remember what you’re about to do. Conscious or not, you know it hurts him when he loses control, and you’re not entirely sure that the ghost wouldn’t stoop to harming his body if things don’t go his way.

The two of you pause at the entrance to the Unitarian graveyard. The church itself is a beautiful old building in the gothic revival style, made of beige stone and black spires reaching for the heavens. Enormous peaked windows stretch nearly the whole height of the chapel walls, inlaid with stained glass depicting scenes from the Bible. The graveyard is attached to the west side of the building and ringed by an ornate iron fence. Its entrance consists of an open archway adorned with a few strings of climbing ivy, wilting now from sun exposure.

You open your duffle bag and Ethan helps you set up your equipment. Your new laptop still hasn’t shipped and you want to have some footage ready to edit as soon as it arrives, so tonight is going to be a two-birds-one-stone situation. Ethan has volunteered to be your cameraman for this video so you can focus on your plan. You packed light for the trip, just your camera and a voice recorder. He carries the former while you carry the latter, tucking your duffel bag under some bushes near the entrance so it’s out of the way.

Ethan has a small light to attach to the camera so the footage is visible without being too disruptive. He tests it out, then starts to count down with his fingers. When he reaches one, he points at you and you slip into the familiarity of your intro.

“Hey guys, I’m (Y/N) and this is Holy City Hauntings. In this episode, we’re going to do something a little special.” You wink at the camera. “So you might notice that I’m filming a little differently than I normally do. Today I have my friend Ethan helping me out. Say hi, Ethan.”

“Hi!” Ethan turns the lens toward himself and waves, then focuses back to you.

“Tonight, I’m bringing you to the Unitarian graveyard,” you say. “This building was erected in 1750 as the Catholic cathedral for the region. It was managed by Reverend James Savers, who had emigrated to the Carolinas from England in the 1730s. His brother, Ebenezer Savers, was one of Emeryville’s premiere architects, and he was the one who designed the church.”

You talk a bit about the architecture and get some shots of the church itself, then return to the entrance of the graveyard.

“You’ll notice that the graveyard does not have a gate. This is thanks to a little-known cult which occupied the building during the late nineteenth century. They called themselves spiritualists.”

Ethan gives a strangled cough and you pause to check on him. He thumps himself on the chest and shakes his head at you, indicating that you should continue.

“Spiritualism,” you explain, “is a religious sect which began in the US in the 1840s during the Second Great Awakening. It was in many ways an offshoot of Christianity, but with several notable differences, primarily that its adherents did not believe that the actions of one lifetime could determine whether someone’s soul goes to heaven or hell. They saw the afterlife as a plane of existence parallel to ours in a way, where souls went and continuously evolved toward the ultimate form, with the goal being to become as close to God as they could.”

Ethan clears his throat and lowers the camera. “That’s not quite accurate,” he says. He’s not looking right at you, like he’s embarrassed about correcting you in the middle of your own video, but he continues, “They don’t really view it as the Christian God, but more like an abstract god who represents ultimate intelligence and wisdom, and spirits are a lot more advanced than humans because they achieve that wisdom.”

You look at him, not sure if he’s trying to be funny or what, but when he doesn’t say anything more you just shrug. “Okay, we can just cut that part out then, I guess.”

He nods and raises the camera again, signalling for you to continue.

“Spiritualism, like most of the Second Great Awakening, primarily appealed to the upper and middling classes. They believed that humans could gain knowledge from the spirit world by communicating with them through mediums. At its peak in the late nineteenth century, the group boasted over eight million followers, most of them wealthy Americans and Europeans.

“For every true believer, however, there were dozens more charlatans looking to make an easy buck. It became common for people claiming to be mediums to host seances and use trickery to give attendees the illusion of making contact with the spirit world. Harry Houdini was actually a famous crusader against these fake mediums in the nineteen twenties and wrote a book,  _ A Magician Among the Spirits _ , in 1924, about his experiences. By the end of the decade, spiritualism had largely gone out of fashion.”

You gesture to the church. “This building had ceased to be a cathedral after the seat of the diocese was moved to Saint Andrew’s across town, and was basically used as storage by the city until a group of spiritualists purchased it in 1857. It served as their center of worship for several decades. During the Civil War, it was actually used as a stop in the Underground Railroad.

“Many spiritualists were fairly progressive for their time. A significant portion of their followers were female and African American, and they supported such causes as the abolition of slavery and full suffrage. The reverend--” Ethan flinches, and your gaze flicks to him; but when he says nothing, you brush it off and continue.

“The reverend, Mr. Ebenezer Fields, was no exception. The initial congregation was all white and upper class, but they made an effort to appear open to everyone-- they could afford to.” You give the camera a wry smile. “Well, in 1859, the spiritualist of Emeryville gained their first black parishioners. They were a couple named Daniel and Suzannah Wright, freed former slaves from rural Alabama who had come to Emeryville looking for a new start. The other members of the congregation were largely welcoming and they became close members of the community.

“There was, however, one significant exception-- a white planter named Thomas Cobbs. On the eve of the Civil War, Mrs. Wright and their two-month-old baby fell victim to the yellow fever epidemic which ravaged Emeryville in the 1850s and 60s. When Mr. Wright brought their bodies to the graveyard, Thomas Cobbs was waiting for him at the gate. He refused to allow entry unless Wright consented to being buried in a segregated section at the back of the graveyard.

“Of course, Wright objected to his demands and attempted to go ahead and bury his wife alongside the bodies of the white parishioners. Cobbs issued a duel, to which Wright agreed, but only after he finished burying his family. When he attempted to push past Cobbs and get through the gate, Cobbs took out his pistol and shot him in the back. Wright took two steps into the graveyard before collapsing, dead.

“Reverend Fields was in the chapel when he heard the gunshot. On discovering what had happened, he became enraged, banned Cobbs from the church, and had him arrested for murder. He was released within the week, but left Emeryville for his plantation out in Monck’s Hood and never returned.

“Meanwhile, Reverend Fields had the gate to the graveyard removed, declaring that so long as there were evil men in the world, his church would be a place where anybody could enter on equal terms.”

You start down the path toward a small, weathered grave marker. “The Wrights were buried under the same headstone, which Daniel had carved himself. No one knows exactly where in the graveyard they are buried, but this,” you point to the battered stone, “is the closest guess we have. You can see that it isn’t inscribed with either names or dates. This is because the Wrights weren’t fully literate, so they did what many people who couldn’t write did when they needed to sign something-- they used symbols which they created to represent themselves. The evidence of the Wrights’ symbols is shaky at best, but it’s very possible that this here--” you point to a somewhat crude circle carved into the rock with two X’s inside-- “is Suzannah’s mark, and this other, smaller one is Daniel’s, obviously added later. It is possible that the reason the baby was not included is that infant mortality was so common that it was a tradition among slaves, and even freemen, to avoid naming your children until they reached five years old.”

You straighten up and give the camera a somber smile as you start back toward the front of the graveyard. “Unfortunately, the pro-abolition fervor of the congregation died down when the Civil War hit. Many of the parishioners were forced to flee the city when it was bombarded by Union forces. Reverend Fields died of pneumonia in the spring of 1865, just a few days before the war’s ‘official’ end. His children buried him in the graveyard beside his wife.” You pause and point to twin headstones elegantly engraved with the names and birth and death dates of the Fields.

“After his death, ownership of the property, according to his will, fell to his oldest daughter, Elizabeth “Bessie” Colleton. The city, however, refused to recognize a married woman’s right to own property, so legal ownership went to her husband, Edward Colleton. Edward still behaved as if Elizabeth was the owner, however; the two of them functioned as partners in everything they did. They ran a bookstore over on Annabel Street and were active abolitionists in their community. When the war brought the legal end of slavery, the Colletons helped establish Emeryville’s first boarding house for freedmen. The house stood right over there.” You point to the lot on the other side of the church where a bank now resides.

“During the week the church served as a daycare for the children of the boarders so they could work. The Colletons held significant social clout-- Edward was from a very old Emeryville family, and he cultivated a circle of wealthy friends who shared his values. The couple used their connections to obtain education and employment for their boarders. As far as the religious role of the church, Elizabeth had left Spiritualism when she got married and became a member of the Universalist General Convention alongside her husband. The Universalists were part of a Christian denomination which believed in universal salvation, as opposed to predestination. In the 1960s it would merge with the American Unitarian Association to become the Unitarian Universalist Association, which it is known as today.

“Edward died in a carriage incident in 1907. He was buried in this graveyard near his wife’s family,” you say, indicating a somewhat newer-looking gravestone. Along the top is an ornate carving of a rearing horse. “Elizabeth tried to keep the boarding house going, but even her supposedly progressive friends were less keen to associate with her. She was in her fifties, all of her children grown or nearly so, and her ideas were a bit too radical for a city reeling from the Reconstruction era. Rumors of heresy surfaced and gave the city council enough reason to shut down the boarding house and seize Elizabeth’s property, including the church. Elizabeth went to live with her oldest son and his family in Beatford, where she continued advocating for equal rights for disenfranchised Americans, but died of unknown causes three years later.

“The church stood empty for several decades and was the site of many rumored hauntings, most of which could be attributed to mischievous teenagers. In the 1970s, it was purchased by the Society for the Preservation of Historic Dwellings and largely restored. The Society still owns it today, but since the early nineties it has been rented out by the Unitarian Universalists. They hold worship services every Sunday and offer tours of the building during the week. Highly recommend it if you ever get a chance to come visit,” you conclude.

Ethan lowers the camera and runs a hand over his face, letting out a soft sigh. Though it’s difficult to tell much in the wan reflection from the flashlight, his skin looks almost pinched and drained, like he’s aged several decades in the last hour. You move toward him without really realizing what you’re doing and bring a hand to caress his cheek. His skin is startlingly cold against the muggy South Carolina night. He flinches at the contact, but doesn’t draw away from your touch.

When his eyes meet yours, you feel a chill run through you at the sight of his eerily pale irises. They sit deep in the hollows of his sockets, nestled in a bed of shadows that looks entirely too comfortable on the face that you’ve come to associate with such joy.

“Is he trying to come out?” you whisper. He winces and you rub a thumb over his cheek to comfort him.

He closes his eyes and sucks in a breath, releasing it in a shaky exhale. “Maybe. I don’t think so?” he says. “I can feel him, but I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t know if he’s going to come out.”

“Do you want to stop? We don’t have to go through with this if you’re unsure,” you say.

He shakes his head vehemently. “No, I made you a promise. We’re doing this.”

You comb your fingers through his hair in a comforting motion, noticing how the skin of his throat flutters as he swallows. “There are other ways to do this,” you assure him. “I don’t want you to suffer.”

“Every moment he’s inside my head is suffering,” he says, his voice clenched. “I want him  _ out _ .”

Your hand leaves his face and you nod solemnly. You motion for him to start filming again and he follows you to a small clearing in the graveyard a bit away from most of the graves. He attaches the camera to a small tripod and places it so that the two of you are within frame as you sit beside each other on the ground, still warm from the baking sun. You face each other and link hands, creating a two-person circle. Your eyes lock across the space and he gives you a gentle nod.

“Spirits,” you begin, “we welcome you and ask that you grant us some of your knowledge. We ask that no malevolent or unholy beings be allowed into this sacred circle. If it please you, we ask that you speak to us.”

The night is heavy on your skin, the silence damp and palpable. You can hear your muscles groaning with tension as you close your eyes and focus on staying very still. Your senses feel taut, humming with the effort of not moving, tuned in to every sound and sensation that might indicate a change.

This time of night, the air is terribly still, draped across the evening like a black cloth over a mirror. Your ears struggle to dig out any noise apart from the canvas backdrop of screeching cicadas. Not the hum of a car coming down the road, nor even a breeze rustling through the Spanish moss, to disturb the heavy weight of the endless night.

Your legs are starting to go numb from sitting in this position for such a long time. You try to shift your weight a bit, but Ethan’s grip on your hands tightens somewhat, and you still. He doesn’t let up, however, and you open your eyes to admonish him, seance be damned, when you see him begin to shake. His body is trembling like a windowpane in a thunderstorm, his jaw clenched and eyes screwed shut, grip so tight you feel like he might just crush your fingers but you don’t dare break the circle. A steady beeping starts up somewhere nearby, and you crane your head to see your EMF meter lying beside the tripod and the needle warbling upward.

You start to speak, but he cuts you off with a strangled groan. His head snaps forward with a resounding  _ crack _ that sends panic straight through you, and only his vice hold keeps you from breaking away and casting off whatever horror is trying to overtake his body. The beeping from your meter increases in pace and pitch, becoming a nearly uninterrupted high-pitched whine. Ethan bows forward, the notches of his spine distinct through his shirt as his forehead brushes the ground.

It all comes to a stop rather suddenly-- even the EMF meter snaps back to silence as if nothing had arrived-- and Ethan’s body goes limp. You’re still debating whether to break the circle when he sits up so quickly you can’t imagine it doesn’t have an ill effect, but his movements are fluid, almost too easy, his expression placid. Almost normal, but for the way his milky sclerae ogle you without reserve.

“If you wanted to see me, all you had to do was ask,” he says with a smirk.

You suppress the shudder that runs through your body when the sight prises a memory from your mind, of that same smirk from between your legs, tongue twisting you into convulsions of pleasure…

“I wanted to ask you a few more questions, if you have a moment,” you manage in what you hope passes for a casual tone.

He cocks a dubious eyebrow. “I might. Depends on what’s in it for me.”

“What do you want?” you reply.

He glances at your joined hands and snorts. “Well, first off, you can let go of me.”

“Oh.” Your hands drop to your sides and you hope the darkness shrouds the awkward blush on your face.

“And you can stop acting like you didn’t have another goddamn ulterior motive in bringing me here,” he adds.

You feign confusion, but he just rolls his eyes. “I’m dead, not stupid. I know you didn’t go to all this trouble just to get some quality time with me.” His lips thin and his expression turns more serious. “Now tell me why you summoned me, and be honest about it.”

Well, that kind of throws a wrench in the middle of your plans. Neither you nor Ethan had anticipated the possibility that he would go along with this willingly. You take a steadying breath and figure it’s best to just jump right in.

“Okay,” you begin, “the reason we called you here was to get you out of Ethan’s body.”

He snorts and tosses his head. “Jesus, is that it? I thought you were going to say you wanted to banish me to the demon realm or something. Which doesn’t exist, by the way.” He claps a hand on your knee. “I’ve wanted out of this thing for ages. Having my own body will make things a  _ lot _ easier.” You pretend not to notice the way he winks at you when he says that.

“Here’s the thing, though,” you push on. “We don’t know… how to give you your own body.”

His blank eyes fix on you with an intensity like a flame, bright and burning to watch for too long but you can’t look away for fear that he’ll lose control and destroy everything.

“Damn. You really were gonna banish me to the demon realm,” he says.

“Well, not the  _ demon _ realm, necessarily. More like that nice place in the sky where people go to enjoy their eternal rest,” you reply.

He gives a sarcastic snort. “Sweetheart, there’s nothing enjoyable about where I’m headed after this,” he says. “Which is why I have no intention of leaving this plane.”

“You can’t stay here forever. Even if you find another body, you’ll burn it out,” you protest.

Something cold flickers in his empty irises. “Not if I eat their soul.”

You recoil in horror at the casual way he talks about something so heinous. Your revulsion must show on your face because he breaks into laughter and slaps his knee like it’s the world’s funniest joke.

“I’m only teasing,” he says. “If I had the power to eat souls, you’d have a much bigger issue on your hands.”

“Jesus. Don’t freak me out like that,” you say.

He chuckles. “Nah, but really, if you could find a soulless vessel for me to take over, I’d be fine. Could be anyone, long as they’re freshly dead. I mean, you could just kill someone if you really want to be picky, but I doubt you’d have the guts for that.”

You wait to see if he’s joking, but when he keeps looking at you with that playful but sincere gaze of his, you realize he’s actually being serious.

He smirks at your incredulity. “Which part are you having trouble with, hm?”

You blink a few times, wondering when exactly your life became the plot of a sci-fi B-movie. “Um,” you stutter, “all of it?”

“Alright, ghost hunter. You seem to be having some trouble grasping this, so I’m going to lay it out nice and slow for you, okay?” he says. “There is no way in hell or heaven that I am letting you kick me out of the mortal plane, so let’s drop the notion that you can get rid of me completely.

“What I need is my own body. Any corpse will work, so long as it’s in wearable condition. Of course, it would be ideal if you could just pick some twenty-something vegan marathon runner and smother them with a pillow, but beggars can’t be choosers and all that. And when I get my own body,” he adds with a grin, “first thing I’m gonna do is fuck you until you can’t walk.”

Oh, Jesus. You’re not sure whether you should be terrified or turned on. Your body decides to do a little of both.

“You’re right. I don’t have the guts to murder someone,” you say, “though if I had to do it, it wouldn’t be for someone like you.”

“Damn,” he snickers. “It’s kinda hot when you pretend like you loathe me.”

“And it’s things like that that make me loathe you.”

He leans back, gesturing to his lanky form. “You know you can’t resist this.”

You roll your eyes, but can’t conceal the smile that plays at your lips.

“What you want doesn’t really matter either way,” he adds. “I’m going to get my own body. I’ll wear this one down as far down as it can take, if that’s what I have to do.” His mouth cracks into a malevolent grin. “And I’ll drag Ethan right to the edge with me.”

Rage coils in your gut, but you clench your fist at your side and take a calming breath. “You’re not improving your case,” you snap.

He laughs outright, the sound like a whip in the hushed evening. “Poke at me all you like, darling. Truth is, I don’t need you.” In a fluid motion so quick you barely see him move, he’s kneeling on the ground just shy of your crossed legs, his face so close to yours you feel like you could drown in his empty eyes.

“I’m giving you the option because I want you. I want you to be happy, and I want you to want to be with me.” His fingers trail across your cheek, sending icy tremors over your skin. “Whichever me you want.”

You’re too ashamed to admit it, but there is a part of you, somewhere deep inside your subconscious, that really wants to just… give in. It would be so much easier than pretending you don’t want him. If you help him get a body of his own, he’ll leave Ethan be, and you’ll be free to-- what? Fuck a dead guy? 

Oh, god. Murder. He’s talking about  _ murdering _ someone in order to steal their body. Maybe to him it doesn’t count if you use a person who’s already dead, but to you it still matters. A person who had a life, friends, interests, dreams, and now they’re gone. Even if their soul, what made them truly  _ them _ , has left this plane, their body was still a part of who they were, and to just take it-- to make it change hands, slide it on a new soul and call it a day, that’s so beyond disrespectful.

Something cold grips your heart, but it isn’t fear. It’s a titanium resolve that brings clarity to your jumbled brain, barrelling back against the sinister temptations he’s pouring in your ears.

“I won’t do it,” you say.

He recoils like you threw the words at him, lip curling in a disdainful sneer. “You’re making a big mistake, little one,” he snarls. “I don’t need your permission to do this. It’s happening whether you help me or not.”

“I know.”

His eyes flash with rage. “You are throwing away so much. Everything we’ve worked for-- everything between us.”

“ _ Us _ ? There isn’t an ‘us’,” you retort. “There’s me, and a boy I’m physically attracted to, and the creepy dead guy who’s hitching a ride on his brain.”

“You’re a fool if you don’t see the connection between us,” he says, his tone heavy with poisonous fury.

“Fine. Call me a fool, then,” you say, tossing your hands up. “Call me whatever you want, if it gets you to  _ leave me alone _ .”

Fury brews in his blank eyes and you feel the first twinges of real fear.

“You’re lying,” he snarls.

You meet his gaze and, fighting the nausea attempting to shove through your facade, arrange your features into an unwavering glare. Pouring all your hatred into your voice, you say with an icy finality, “I’m not.”

For a moment his expression is frozen, empty and unreadable. Then a force collides with your chest, the world tilts away from you, your skull smacks against the packed earth and the stars are glowering down at you from their lonely sentinels. His hand is digging into your windpipe, pinning you down by the throat, rendering you unable to move. You squirm fruitlessly against his hold, eyes rolling as you search out your attacker.

He leans forward, twisted features dominating your field of vision, and shifts all of his weight into the hand around your throat. His lips quirk into a pleased smile at the agony apparent in your face. It hurts, dear god does it  _ hurt _ , your brain is swimming as it cries out for oxygen, but there’s still a small part of you that’s conscious enough to want to rip that awful grin right out of his skull.

He leers over you, so close that his face blots out the blinking stars and the shadows over his expression are stark and cold in the light from the camera (somehow you have room inside of your muddled brain to be relieved that he didn’t destroy your equipment). Adrenaline, hot and blinding, is struggling to claw its way into your limbs, but the world is so distant, so dark and indistinct.

A chuckle seething with otherworldly malice rumbles through Ethan’s chest. “It’s cute when you think you’re in control,” he hums. His grip tightens on your throat as he whispers, “You’ve no idea what kind of fire you’re playing with, child.”

His words flow through your consciousness like silt, not quite sticking. Your brain is sluggish to process anything outside of its desperate need for air. Something in the back of your mind bristles at his voice, something is not quite right, you know you need to stand up and  _ punch _ your way out of this, but you can do nothing. You can only lie there and let him kill you.

Air rushes into your lungs in a painful burst. Ethan-- no, not Ethan, the parasite that’s made its vile home inside his body-- sits back on bent legs, watching you come back to yourself. The sudden airflow hits your abused larynx in such a way that it sends you into an unexpected coughing fit, and you roll onto your side, hacking and gasping. Your lungs rebel against the flurry of sensations and bile heaves in your throat with the force of your breaths. A hand rubs soothing circles over your back, but you’re too weak to pull away.

“There, there. See how much nicer it is when you let me have my way?” he murmurs. He takes you by the arm with uncharacteristic gentleness and tugs you into a sitting position. His other hand goes to your throat, but rather than squeezing, his touch is like a soothing balm, melting away the lingering discomfort.

“I took away the pain,” he explains, “though I left that ring of pretty bruises. A little something to remind you of me when I’m away.”

You’re too addled by his spring of changing emotions to respond. You just sit and stare at him, his spindly hands, the pulse jumping in his throat and the hunger in his blank eyes as he regards you. It’s an awful feeling, unclean and pinned down like a frog beneath a microscope, just waiting to feel the knife in your guts. Every particle of you wants to scream at him, run away, rebel, but you’re paralyzed in his gaze.

Suddenly he flinches, lips twisting into a feral snarl, and he jerks away from you. His hands squeeze into fists, fingernails digging so hard into his palms you can see blood begin to well up, and his breathing comes in labored heaves. He looks up at you from beneath his shag of blue hair and grins even as he body trembles like a tower in an earthquake.

“Your boyfriend is stronger than I thought. He’s trying to come back to the surface,” he hisses. “Remember what I told you. I’ll be back soon.”

With a hoarse gasp, his head whips to the side with a nauseating snap of bones and joints, then he flops down in the dirt.

The absence of the gruesome passenger springs you from your paralysis. You rush to Ethan’s side and jostle him from his state. His body is still for so many endless moments that you feel you might fall apart, but finally his eyes open, thankfully back to their normal color, and he coughs weakly. You help him to sit up, keeping a comforting hand on his arm as he adjusts to his surroundings.

“Ugh,” he groans, rubbing the back of his neck. “I hate doing that.”

He pauses, eyes fixated on you, and you’re verging from confused to mildly creeped out when he reaches out a hand to touch your throat, and you remember the finger-shaped bruises there. You can see his thoughts swirling as he registers the sight, then his face collapses, lips floundering over a thousand apologies.

“Oh, my god,” he chokes out at last. “Did I do that?”

You cover his hand with your own and twine your fingers together, bringing your clasped hands to rest over your heart. “No,” you say. “No, you didn’t.”

Your kindness seems only to make him feel worse. His lip quivers and he averts his gaze to the ground, still bathed in the harsh light from the camera. You wrap an arm around his shoulders, hugging him to you while your other hand strokes through his hair. He breaks then, his body shaking with sobs as he buries his face in your shoulder and locks his arms around your waist. He cries raw, uninhibited tears, howling his fear and horror into your skin, and you take it all in like a reservoir in a hurricane. His fingers dig into the small of your back and he holds you like you’re the only thing keeping him afloat in a tumultuous ocean.

It occurs to you then, in the way that mundane things seem to interject in important moments, that your camera is still recording. You gently extract yourself from Ethan to shut it off and put it away in its bag. When you return to him, he’s hunched over with his legs drawn up and face buried in his knees, rocking slightly as he hugs himself. You rub his back with gentle strokes and try to think of comforting things to tell him.

“Shh,” you whisper, “it’s alright. I’m alright. Everything’s alright.”

He lets out a muffled sob in response.

You put an arm around his shoulders and lean against his side. “What can I do to make it better?” you ask.

The muffled sounds from behind his arms die down, and after several moments he lifts his head, regarding you with puffy red eyes wide with incredulity.

“Are you seriously trying to comfort me right now?” His voice is thick with tears. “This is my fault. You got hurt, and it’s  _ my fault _ . I hurt you. You should be running away from me right now.”

He tries to scoot out of your reach, but you latch a firm hand around his arm and tug him back to you. “No,” you repeat. “That wasn’t you. You would never hurt me. Mostly because you know I could beat you in a fight any day.” He lets out a gurgling chuckle.

“You didn’t ask for any of this to happen. I don’t blame you, Ethan. I care about you.” Your hand moves to cup his cheek, and he smiles hesitantly. “I’m going to help you however I can. Please know that.”

He sighs and glances down at his feet, then back to you. “You know,” he says softly, “when this first started happening-- before I knew what to call it-- I thought I was going insane.” He runs a hand through his mop of hair. “I’d have all these awful thoughts-- I’d get so angry. I wanted to hurt people for no reason, people I cared about. I’d black out for hours and be so scared of what I’d done.

“When I finally worked out that it wasn’t me having those thoughts-- fuck, I was so relieved.” His lip trembles and he swallows hard. “But then I realized that I’d have to spend the rest of my life like this. What if I acted on those thoughts? What if he did something awful while he was inside my body and I had to live with it? What if he… what if I killed someone?”

A tear spills out of his eye and you wipe it away with your thumb. He glances up at you, eyes wide and desperate, and it’s like you can feel all of the sadness, the horror, the fear, the hopelessness in his soul. God, he’s been dealing with the weight of this secret  _ alone _ , for so long. Feeling like a monster trapped inside his own body. Your heart aches for him.

“I won’t let that happen,” you promise him.

And then, perhaps because you’re swept up in the spirit of the moment, still high off the maelstrom of emotions battering you all evening, or perhaps the sheer intimacy of this physical closeness, alone together in this balmy, star-sprinkled night, but he closes his eyes and you close yours and then your lips meet. His mouth is soft and his skin smells like him, a distinct scent that clouds your brain and sends your heart racing. Every touch is an explosion of sensation-- his nose brushing your cheek, the gentle glide of his tongue just behind his lips-- it wrings the breath from your lungs and the pulse from your veins, leaving you pleasantly weak. The hand that had wiped away the last of his tears moves to the side of his neck, brushing over the warm skin and lithe muscle, taking in all of him.

You inhale slowly, savoring the sensation, his beautiful plush lips against your own and his pulse beneath your fingertips, and you feel your heartbeat change to match the riot assaulting your senses until it settles into a new pattern.  _ Ethan. Ethan. Ethan _ . You smile against his lips, feeling your heart flutter.  _ Ethan. Ethan. Ethan. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was going to have smut but I ended up deciding against it. There will be smut in the upcoming chapters, though, so don't worry! We're getting to the real exciting part pretty soon. I don't want to give too much away, but we may or may not finally discover the ghost's identity (ooOOOOooOHHH). At the end I'm also going to post something that talks about the history of Emeryville, which, although it's a made-up city, is based on Charleston, SC, USA, where I live! I'll mainly talk about the stories that the reader includes in their videos and the real stories that I based them on.
> 
> In the meantime, if you would like more sex, violence, and YouTubers, I would strongly suggest you check out my fic Birthday Sex! It's over 47k words so it should keep you pretty busy while you're waiting for the next chapter of Ghost Stories. These fics take place in two different universes, though Ghost Stories will be the only fic of its 'verse. I'm already working on another fic that's something of a continuation of one of the Birthday Sex endings, which will be more Ethan angst/fluff. I was also digging through my writing folder and found a bunch of fics that I started a long time ago and just kind of forgot, so I'll probably be fixing those up and posting them soon.
> 
> And finally, if you guys aren't playing Choices, I STRONGLY suggest you check it out. It's an app kind of like Episode except not terrible. Seriously, the art is TO DIE FOR, the writing is amazing, everything is just incredible. It's made by Pixelberry which is also the company that runs Hollywood U and High School Story, also fun apps. But most importantly, my favorite story from Choices, "The Crown and the Flame", is almost on the last chapter of the trilogy and I'm still not emotionally prepared for it. But, I have a couple fics queued up for that. Mostly action and friendship/fluff, but there will be a bit of smut featuring everyone's favorite spymaster Raydan Lykel. Please look him up if you've never seen him before; he is the most beautiful man I've ever seen, animated or not.
> 
> That's about it for now. I'm still pretty busy with Adult Life (TM), but I have a bunch of projects in the works, so stay tuned and enjoy!


	8. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Planning a murder is hard work. You and Ethan take a trip to the aquarium.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow! i am so fucking sorry this took so long! i said in the last chapter that i wouldn't have as long of a break between chapters and then...i did this. wow. Well, this chapter is almost 9,000 words, if that helps any. I did my best to work in some fluffy smut for those who have been requesting it. It was...challenging, not gonna lie, but I think I managed it okay.
> 
> also, warning for possible dubcon during this sex scene. i just want to clarify: when you are having sex, consent is NECESSARY. consent doesn't just mean a "yes". If you're having sex and you want to stop but the other person keeps going, that is not consent. Even if you get turned on and/or have an orgasm, that doesn't inherently equal consent. i just want people to keep this in mind when reading fics like this. the sex scenes i write tend to be more on the rough side and i just want to emphasize that this kind of stuff is okay, BETWEEN CONSENTING ADULTS. sex doesn't have to be "sexy", if that makes sense. sex can be silly! it can be lighthearted! you can laugh! sometimes you fart! it's okay!
> 
> just wanted to throw that out there for everyone. be safe + have fun y'all <3

**Emmett E. Seabrook (N. EMERYVILLE)**

Emmett Seabrook left this world last Thursday, the fourteenth of August. Seabrook, 84, spent the past four years battling with lung cancer. A born and raised Emeryville resident, he served as the organist at Mount Jacob Baptist Church for forty-seven years…

**Lorelai Constance Fisher (MONCK’S HOOD, SC)**

Lorelai Fisher passed away this morning due to health complications resulting from a vehicle accident she suffered last May. Fisher, 47, was a mother of four and...

**Edna Romanov (WEST STEPHENS)**

Caroline Edna Romanov, or as she was called by all who knew her, ‘Wild Edna’ due to her many years spent fighting in the bullring, left our world on Saturday, the sixteenth of August. An accident in the ring nine years before finally caught up to her when a minor head injury led to hemorrhage of the brain. Romanov, 93…

**Kiana Amelia Johnson (LADDERVILLE, SC)**

Kiana Johnson passed away last Saturday evening during a botched root canal. The 27-year-old is survived by her mother, Edwina Keyes-Johnson, who told the _Post and Courier_ that Kiana always saw the brighter side of things, and would have been delighted to tell people that she went out the same way as Michael Jackson. The 27-year-old teacher was a long-time resident of…

  


That you’re casually browsing the obituaries for a newly dead person to steal so a malevolent ghost can inhabit their body demonstrates just how fucking weird your life has become. You and Ethan are lounging in the living room of your apartment, both of you engrossed in research. You’re supposed to be looking for a solution to this whole mess, but you found yourself drifting to the local paper’s obituary site to poke around for viable candidates. You don’t know whether to be more upset that you’re actually considering this, or that you’re not upset enough about it.

You don’t want to admit it to Ethan, but you truly cannot think of any other way to get out of this. The ghost has made it fairly evident that he’ll do anything to stay in the living realm, and with what you’ve seen so far, you don’t want to find out what he’d do when pressed. You don’t doubt for a second that he would burn Ethan’s body to a shell if it meant getting his way. You hadn’t told him about the ghost’s threats, but you know he’d sacrifice himself without a second thought if it meant protecting the people he cared about from the monster living in his brain. But you’re not selfless like him. You’re going to make sure he _lives_ , dammit.

You glance over at his lanky form, cross-legged on the living room floor and hunched over a thick, dusty tome. He’d gone to the public library and checked out as many volumes on the occult as he could carry. For a historically conservative town, there’s an impressive number. Besides the one he’s reading, he’s got three more open to various pages and a small pile behind him. Every few minutes he turns a few pages and scribbles something in a notebook in his lap. You admire his spirit (no pun intended), but this is one of those times when his unerring optimism will do more damage than good. That’s why it’s up to you to be the realist.

You’d put a definite stop on murder. No matter how many lives it might save, including Ethan’s, you don’t want to become a killer for this guy’s sake. So you figure scavenging a body is the best option. You’ve been justifying it to yourself by saying that it’s not really stealing, just… recycling. Recycling a body. That belonged to a person. And will now belong to a violent, oversexed dead guy who’s determined to be with you.

It may not matter, anyway, since you haven’t been able to find anyone who fits the criteria. Everyone is too old, or died in such a way that their bodies can’t be reanimated. Who would have guessed that a city filled with so many Whole Foods-munching, yoga-going hipsters would have so few healthy corpses?

What’s worse is you can’t talk to anyone about this. Obviously you can’t tell Ethan, and while you certainly have plenty of friends who are more than familiar with the occult, you doubt any of them would be comfortable with the grave robbing. It is a crime, after all, not to mention totally immoral-- although lately, you’ve found morality to be an increasingly relative phenomenon in your life.

Ethan closes his book with a _snap_ that makes you jump, sets it aside, and lies back with a groan.

“How is it so fucking _hot_?” he whines.

Despite your air conditioning’s best efforts, the apartment has become saturated with the disgustingly damp August air. You’re both clad in shorts and tank tops and have two fans aimed straight at you, but it does little to alleviate the heat. You set your laptop aside and lean back against the couch cushions, giving Ethan a fond smile. At this angle you can’t see his face, but his shirt is bunched up a bit, giving you a nice view of his abs and the curve of his hips just above his shorts.

A hot blush completely unrelated to the weather outside bursts over your cheeks and you quickly glance away. Neither of you has acknowledged the kiss you shared last night, but the tension between you is palpable and maddening.

By the time you’d left the cemetery, it had been well into the wee hours and you didn’t want Ethan driving home alone, especially in his state, so you’d brought him to your place. You had ushered him to the couch and gone to get him some water, and by the time you’d returned he had conked out. You’d woken around noon to find that he had already woken up, retrieved his car, gone to the library, and come back. He’d been sitting on the floor like he belonged there, flipping through a leatherbound book and only looking up to give you a cheerful greeting when you wandered out of your bedroom. It had been like nothing had happened between you at all. You hadn’t been sure whether to be disappointed or not.

Now, hours later, twilight is beginning to creep in and shadows are pooling beneath the furniture. Your eyes are burning from staring at your computer screen for so long. You run a hand over your face and snap on a lamp, causing Ethan to flinch away from the sudden light.

“Noo,” he mumbles, rolling onto his stomach.

You snort and give his leg a playful nudge as you get to your feet and stretch. It feels so nice after sitting on the couch all day that you close your eyes and let out a soft moan of relief. When you look down, Ethan has rolled onto his side and is looking at you over his glasses with a surprised but coy expression.

“Fuck off,” you say, sticking your tongue out. He blows a raspberry back at you and flops onto his back, closing his eyes and letting out a hum of contentment.

You pad down the hall and into the kitchen, wincing when you turn on the light and the extent of the mess is revealed in all its glory. You set about gathering the ingredients for instant coffee and preparing the machine. While it grumbles through the brewing process, you sit at the kitchen table and look out the window. Your view is mostly obscured by the fence separating your property from that of your neighbor, but you can see the tendrils of the setting sun reaching out from behind the fringe of old buildings. The purple sky is shot through with streaks of orange and pink which thin and fade as you watch.

You’re so engrossed in the sight that you don’t notice Ethan come into the kitchen, so when he sits down across from you, you jump about a mile.

“Anyone home?” he jokes. You give him a wry smile and turn back to the view outside to keep your mind off the pleasurable flutters in your chest, but the sunset appears dull in comparison with Ethan’s brilliant smile.

The coffee machine gives a final gurgle and emits the last of the brew. You fetch two mugs from the cabinet and fill them with the sweet brown nectar of the heavens.

“Cream or sugar?” you offer. He shakes his head. You snag a handful of Splenda packets and sit back down at the table, handing one of the mugs to Ethan. He accepts it with a grateful sigh and takes a long sip.

“Ugh, it’s perfect. I love you,” he says.

The both of you seem to realize what he’s said, and the implications lurking behind it, in the same moment, and you resolutely look away from one another and sip your coffee in silence.

After he’s emptied his mug, Ethan sets it back down on the table and heaves a weary sigh.

“Back to the grind?” you ask, draining the last of your coffee.

He looks down into his empty cup, then at the lingering sunset outside the window. He drums his fingers on the table and bites his lip, a comedic image of someone lost in thought. You’re thinking of the best way to grab his attention when he whirls to face you.

“Have you ever been to the aquarium?” he asks.

The question is so far from what you were expecting that it takes you a moment to process what he’d actually said. “I’ve been to… an aquarium,” you reply. “Why?”

“But have you been to _the_ aquarium?” he says.

Recognition finally hits you. “Oh. No, I haven’t been to the one downtown.”

His face splits into an ecstatic grin. “Awesome! Let’s go.”

“But it’s--” you check the clock, “it’s almost seven. The aquarium is closed by now.”

He springs out of his chair and hurries down the hallway to the living room. You can hear him rifling around for a minute, then he returns dangling a fob from his hand. “Not a problem,” he chirps.

“Do I want to know how you got that?” you say.

“Relax. I’ve been volunteering there for, like, ever. I’m basically one of the exhibits,” he says with a wink.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to get you in trouble…” you reply.

“Positive. Come on, we deserve a bit of a break. And it’s not like either of us is falling asleep any time soon,” he grins.

You’re absolutely helpless against that smile. “Sure,” you say, “let’s go.”

He gives an energetic cheer and grabs your arm, dragging you toward the door so quickly you almost forget to grab your house key.

  


The idea of sneaking into the aquarium at night becomes a lot less thrilling once you actually get there. The building is at the edge of an enormous wharf, beyond a long stretch of grassy park. A few lingering tourists and evening joggers are milling around, but otherwise there is no sign of life aside from the buzzing of the cicadas. Ethan skirts around the far side of the park while you follow half-behind him. In the dark, it’s impossible for him to see your face, for which you’re exceedingly grateful, because the urge to grab his hand is so strong you’re pretty sure your face is redder than a persimmon.

No one pays the two of you any mind as you make your way through the shadows to an obscure entrance on the side of the building. The exterior of the aquarium is boxy and unassuming, made of gray cement and topped with a shallow glass dome. The back door blends in so well with the rest of the structure that you almost don’t see it until you get close enough to notice a small black security system set into the wall. Ethan retrieves the fob from his pocket and presses it against the box, which emits a soft beep. He turns to give you a gleeful smile as he opens the door.

The room beyond is starkly lit by a row of fluorescent ceiling lights, not dissimilar to a morgue or a dentist’s office. One wall is taken up by a host of computer monitors and a desk covered in important-looking buttons. The rest of the room is bare aside from three faintly beige lockers shoved into the corner and another door set into the opposite wall.

“Security headquarters,” Ethan explains. He scans the fob to unlock the other door and holds it open to you with a look of expectancy.

At an initial glance, the room beyond appears to be completely dark. Once you and Ethan step inside, however, and the door closes, cutting off the light from the security room, you can see a trail of tiny blue LEDs set into the wall beside you.

“They’re meant to simulate a glow worm cave,” Ethan says.

The space appears to be a narrow hallway, the walls and floor covered in carpet that muffles your footfalls as you walk. You place your hand against the wall and trace the path of the LEDs, allowing it to guide you around the curve of the passage. At the end is a wide door, also carpeted, blending in so well you almost miss it.

Pushing it open, you emerge into a room so beautiful that you feel the breath leave your lungs. The place is ovular with steep, curved walls encompassing a tiled floor. The tiles along the edge of the room are a deep onyx and interspersed with  tiled columns covered in rings of tiny blue lights much like the glow worm-lights of the hallway. Where the capitals of the columns meet the balcony above, the lights expand and spread like luminescent tendrils.

Dominating the room is an enormous cylindrical tank easily forty or fifty feet in diameter. Stepping out from under the balcony cover, you can see that it reaches at least four stories up and is capped by the magnificent glass dome. From the outside, the dome had been hardly visible, but here you can see that the glass is laid in elaborate shapes depicting a coral reef teeming with schools of tiny, colorful fish. On every story is a curved balcony projecting over the open space, each with its own tanks and curved passages leading deeper into the building. Suspended beneath the balconies are dozens of statues in the shape of sea creatures, the dancing blue light from the tanks giving the illusion of actually being underwater.

The floor on which you’re standing is not flat, but slightly tiered, the shimmering tiles forming a curving step path around the central tank. The space is dotted with fake rocks and ruins overgrown with algae and coral, on which are laid wooden slats so people can sit and rest while they admire the exhibits. Beside each tank is a touch screen containing pictures and descriptions of the animals inside it.

“I could tell you about most of the species in here,” Ethan says. You jump, startled from your awed reverie, and he gives you a gentle smile.

You go to one of the tanks laid into the wall and squint at the creatures darting through the water. You point to a blackish-brown, diamond-shaped creature with a thin, short tail protruding from what you assume is its spine. “What’s that one?”

“That’s easy,” Ethan says. “It’s a skate. A lot of people confuse them for rays, and even though they belong to the same family, which also includes sharks and sawfish, they’re actually very different.”

“How so?” you ask, smiling at his enthusiasm.

“Well, mainly, rays are way more badass. They’re usually a lot bigger than skates, and they have these venomous spikes on their tails to defend against predators, and they have big teeth for crushing their prey. Whereas skates generally rely on those spikey things on their backs to defend themselves, and their teeth are really small. Also, rays give live birth, but skates lay eggs. Their egg sacs are called mermaid purses because they’re kinda rectangular and purse-shaped. I think they’re actually pretty gross.”

You nod, a bit stunned by his expertise. Your marine knowledge doesn’t extend much farther than “it shiny”.

You continue to the next tank, which is dominated by an elaborate sandcastle prop. There is only one species of fish here, as far as you can see. They’re a little smaller than the size of a football, striped white and maroon and bristling with spike-like fins. They seem to be ignoring the castle for the most part. A sudden motion catches your eye, and you glance down to see a small eel poking its head out of an opening in the castle wall. Its eyes are open wide and its mouth is continuously opening and closing (dare you say… floundering?). You giggle at the silly image.

“Oh, these guys are the coolest!” Ethan exclaims. “These are lionfish-- they’re actually an invasive species here. They are so badass. Those spiky fins are super venomous, so they don’t have too many natural predators. They pretty much just chill on coral reefs and much on invertebrates all day.”

He points to the eel, who seems oblivious to its apparently highly venomous roommates. “This guy is my favorite. I call him Fred. He’s a moray eel and he was born here, so he’ll never go into the ocean, but he’s a crowd favorite. He opens his mouth like that in order to push water through his gills so he can breathe. Most moray have really bad eyesight, but their sense of smell helps them hunt. They’re really good at squeezing into small crevices to get to their prey.” A huge grin spreads across his face and he bounces with excitement. “In the wild, sometimes grouper who hang around coral reefs will ask moray to help them hunt. Like, they just do this little head wiggle thing, and the moray know to help them out! It’s the only known example of cooperative hunting between different fish species! How cool is that?”

You didn’t think anyone could get you to actually start getting _excited_ about fish, but the enthusiasm in Ethan’s voice and body language is infectious. As you watch him stare into the tank with the expression of a child who’s just landed at the North Pole, you find yourself sprouting a wide grin to match his own. You can’t help it. After everything the two of you have been through, it’s such a relief to see him so simply, unassumingly happy.

You take one of his hands in your own. “What else can you show me?” you ask.

He doesn’t look at you for a long moment, though his smile fades to something calmer. He glances at you with an unreadable expression, then his eyes dart to your joined hands.

Your face flushes when you realize you misread the situation. Apologies warble on your tongue as you make to let go-- but his grip tightens, and he gives you a smile full of such tenderness you feel as though you might melt. You return his smile and rub your thumb over his knuckle.

“Wanna see the sea turtles?” he suggests, the pep returning to his posture.

“Sure!” You let him lead you, hands still joined, up the faux rock path to the enormous tank at the center of the room. He continues past the tank, to a glass elevator you hadn’t noticed from your earlier vantage point.

“It’s only one floor up, but I don’t feel like climbing the stairs,” he says, a bit apologetically.

“You read my mind,” you grin.

Once on the second floor, he leads you a ways around the balcony and then down one of the hallways branching off of the main room. The space beyond is a long, curved room, with individual tanks set along the wall.

“Sea turtles are usually pretty solitary, so that’s why we don’t keep them all in one big tank,” Ethan explains. “Actually, one of the main features of the aquarium is our sea turtle hospital. All the turtles here were rescued from the ocean and will be returned once they’re all better.”

You follow him to the first tank, where an enormous black turtle mills about the space. “This is Stacey. She’s a leatherback, which is why she has that dark coloring,” Ethan says. “She got tangled up in some fishing lines a few months back-- they found her nearly drowned.”

“But she’s a turtle? Don’t they have gills or something?” you ask.

“Sea turtles are actually air breathers. They spend most of their time underwater because they can hold their breath for a really long time. They really only come ashore to lay eggs.” He points to an exhibit beside the tank, consisting of a long vertical panel with “How Do Your Lungs Measure Up?” printed in bold letters at the top. There are ten buttons set into the panel, and besides each one is a label-- Human, Dolphin, Whale, and so on, with a number of minutes beside each one. At the top is Sea Turtle, 240-400 minutes.

“Holy shit,” you whisper.

“Yeah, they’re pretty fucking awesome,” Ethan says with a grin.

You continue through the room, admiring the sea turtles and listening to Ethan tell you about each one. Throughout the tour you don’t feel yourself getting bored once. It’s actually really fun to listen to him talk about something about which he’s clearly very passionate. An idea occurs to you.

“You should make videos about the animals here in the aquarium,” you say.

“Hmm?” he says, wrenching his attention from a Kemp’s Ridley nosing along the bottom of its tank.

“For your channel. You obviously know a lot about this stuff,” you say. “You should make a few videos about it. You could help spread awareness of the aquarium, maybe get more people to donate or something.”

He shrugs. “Maybe. My channel is kinda more about gaming stuff, but maybe I’ll think about it.”

Something in his voice sounds off. It’s not quite patronizing; it feels more like he’s trying to brush past the subject without hurting your feelings, though you can’t really imagine why. You’ve told him lots about your channel, but it strikes you that you’ve never actually seen any of his videos. Whenever you broach the subject, even remotely, he always finds a way to redirect the conversation. Up to now you hadn’t really thought about it. Does that make you selfish?

“Hey,” you say, “I just realized-- I’ve never seen your channel.”

“Hm? Oh.” He shrugs. “Yeah, it’s nothing special. I mean, I like doing it, but I’m not passionate about stuff like you are. I kind of just play video games and act like a doofus.”

“Come on, you’re just being humble,” you say. With the hand that isn’t in his own, you gently slug his arm. “I also happen to like watching you be a doofus.”

He laughs weakly, but doesn’t look at you.

Something twinges sadly in your chest. “Would it really bother you if I watched your videos?”

The two of you have emerged from the sea turtle room and are back in the central space. Ethan walks over to the edge of the balcony and you stand beside each other in silence, watching the undulations of the creatures in the Great Ocean Tank.

“It’s not that,” he says at last.

You keep your eyes fixed on the water and say nothing, waiting for him.

“It’s just…” He absently runs his free hand through his hair in that way that makes your heart squeeze. “It’s just, with everything… going on, you know. I’m not sure… I’m not sure if I can do it much longer.”

“Your channel?”

“Yeah. I mean, what if… I can’t… I’m just so, tired…”

His voice begins to warble and his grip on your hand grows tighter, like you’re the only thing keeping him afloat in the tumult of his own mind. You turn to face him and he looks at you with watery eyes and cheeks hollow with fear. He looks so vulnerable, so pained. All you want is to bring him somewhere dark and closed and safe from all the awful things in the world.

You lay your free hand against the side of his face and stroke your thumb over his cheek. He closes his eyes, his long lashes stark against his pale skin, and a few tears spill over and make hot trails across his skin. You let go of him to place your other hand behind his head, and then you lean up to kiss the tears away. His cheeks taste salty and cold on your lips.

When you pull away, you can see that his mouth is open slightly, his breath coming in rapid but quiet pants. He swallows hard before his eyes flutter open and fix you with a look of equal affection and desire. You realize that your hands are still on him, and a self-conscious flush colors your skin as you draw back.

Half of you hopes Ethan will pull you back to him and do the things you’ve been dying to do with him since that first kiss (had it really only been last night?), but you’re also relieved when he simply takes your hand and continues along the passage.

You make your way up one floor at a time, you pausing to point out the fish you like and Ethan telling you more information about them than you’d ever thought you would care to know. When you reach the top floor, a glance at your phone tells you that you’ve been there for nearly two hours. Though your feet are sore as all get-out, the thought of leaving is unbearable to even dwell upon.

“I saved the best for very last,” Ethan says with a look of glee.

You roll your eyes, but follow him eagerly down the corridor. This one is longer and quite narrow. It’s not wide enough for the two of you to stand abreast, so Ethan goes in front and you follow close behind, hands still joined. Although the space is rather dark, the floor is scattered with tiny blue-green lights simulating a bioluminescent path. When Ethan glances over his shoulder to flash you a knowing grin, the light dancing off his skin makes him look positively angelic.

As you come around a curve, you can see a faint blue glow shimmering on the wall. At the end of the turn the passage deposits you into a glistening hallway, all gleaming marble and glass. What strikes you most, however, is that on the other side of the glass lie dozens and dozens of sharks.

The hallway stretches in a slow curve back in the direction from which you came. The floors are a pale marble so smooth and glistening it looks like water, and the walls and arched ceiling are seamless glass, a perfect tunnel right through the pool of sharks. Many sharks are lying on top of the glass, offering a perfect view of the stark white of their underbellies and the jagged curve of their mouths. More of them mill through the water in their infinite, undulating dance. There are some you recognize, but most of them are completely alien to you. The hallway is bathed in a gentle blue light, and the whole scene carries an overwhelming sense of calm.

Ethan tugs you forward to stand right beneath one of the sharks. “Aren’t they amazing?” he murmurs.

You smile at him. “What, no long spiel about their dietary habits?”

He shrugs. “Some things are so beautiful, you just want to look.”

He turns to you, and you feel your heart contract at the affection in his eyes. They’re so expressive, pale and searing into you in the most incredible ways, and you feel like he could communicate volumes just by looking at you.

Like right now. Oh, shit, he’s giving off some serious kissing vibes. He wants to kiss you. You definitely want to kiss him. Should you lean in? Should you wait for him to make a move? Should--

When your lips meet, you taste stars and heat. It’s simple and right, with none of the awkwardness of a first kiss, trembling lips and fumbling hands, but the ease and, well, _right_ -ness of something that just is. You close your eyes and breathe in the smell of his skin, revel in the softness of his lips, the gentle hitch of his breath.

It ends too soon, as most wonderful things do, and then you’re leaning against one another, foreheads touching, eyes screwed shut as you wait for your breath to come back to you. Ethan cups your face in his hands and presses his lips against your forehead, inhaling the scent of your hair. You smile and nuzzle the side of his neck, drawing an affectionate chuckle from him.

After a time, he pulls back, though he doesn’t take his hands from your face, instead stroking his thumbs over your cheeks. You want to close your eyes and dissolve under his touch, but the way he’s looking at you now, a bit more serious, keeps you there.

“When I said that thing earlier-- about my channel,” he begins. “I wasn’t being entirely… honest.”

You tilt your head, waiting for him to continue.

He takes a shaky breath. “You’ve been doing so much for me. You’re working so hard, just to help me. Someone you barely even know--”

You open your mouth to protest, sure you know where he’s headed with this, but he shakes his head and continues.

“I’m grateful for that, I am. And I trust you. I don’t know how to prove it to you other than just saying it, but I do, I trust you to help me. And I know how strong you are, how good-- but--” His voice catches and he has to pause to compose himself. “I don’t think I can do it.”

You miss the implication at first. He’s been trying so hard to find a solution to this, to get himself out of it alive-- how could he--?

“I’m not strong enough. I can’t fight him anymore,” Ethan whispers.

Oh.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before,” he says. “I--”

“No.”

He pauses and moves his hands from your face to rest on your shoulders. “No?”

“No. I’m not letting him kill you,” you respond.

His expression is tense, and he looks like he wants to argue with you, but there’s an overwhelming sadness there as well. “There’s nothing we can do. He’s too powerful. The best way to do this, so nobody gets hurt--”

“Stop it!”

You take his hands between your own and press them to your heart. “Maybe I don’t know you that well. Maybe this is too soon, or whatever, but I don’t care,” you hiss. “I’m _not_ letting that son of a bitch take you away from me.”

He looks at you with an unfathomable gaze. You return it, unflinching, conveying injecting every bit of steel will into your eyes.

Your mouths meet in a chaotic clash of teeth and tongues. As if of one mind, you let go of him to throw your arms around his neck, and his hands go to your waist. You tangle your fingers in his hair and press him to you, like if you kiss him hard enough he’ll never be able to leave you. The air swirls with hot panting breaths and wispy sighs, every nerve on fire with his touch. His nose digs into your cheek and his tongue swipes over your teeth, quietly asking for the entrance that you’re all too ready to give. It’s quick and bruising, none of the gentle touches of before, giving in completely to the need roiling through your blood.

His hands go to your shoulders and press you against the wall, the cold glass against your skin making you gasp into the kiss. His fingers grip your waist, not owning, just needing closeness in the face of mortality. He presses against you so hard that you’re sure your bodies will meld into one, that you will sink into the cool glass and dance with the sharks for eternity. His touch, hard, stinging, beautiful, sends shivers through your body. God, you’d be happy if he never stopped touching you. His hands are thin and almost spindly, pale and veined like a spider’s hand, but you can feel the strength behind them when he squeezes your waist and digs his fingertips into your lower back. You arch into his touch, tangle both hands in his hair and press yourself to him, needing to be _closer_.

You whine a bit when his mouth leaves your own, but then his lips press against the side of your neck and you decide this is a very, _very_ okay alternative. He presses a trail of kisses down your neck, taking his time, letting you languish in the maddening pleasure of the sensation. His tongue snakes out and traces the path his lips made on your neck, slowing once he reaches the fleshy area near the joint of your neck and shoulder.

A sudden pang makes you cry out. Ethan’s head whips toward you, alarm written over his expression.

“Was it too hard? I can stop,” he says.

“No, no, ‘m fine. Please,” you whisper through the haze of your arousal, “please keep going.”

He smiles and returns to his task, painting red hickeys over your skin and reveling in the noises you make. His hands slip under the back of your shirt and press you closer to him as he makes his way lower over your chest. He pauses at the collar of your shirt.

“Can I--?” He doesn’t seem to know quite how to word his request, but you’re already ahead of him. You shrug out of your shirt as quickly as you can manage and discard it without a thought.

Ethan lets out a soft moan that makes you soaking in an instant. He continues the same pattern as before, kissing slowly down your chest, then pauses before he gets to your nipple. You wrap your arms around his waist and try to pull him to you, urging him to _get on with it, already_ , but he just giggles at your impatience. You glance down and feel your entire world freeze when his eyes meet yours. They’re playful, teasing, dancing with promise that this night is long from over should you cooperate. Without breaking eye contact, Ethan traces a tongue over your chest and you gasp when he brushes over your sensitive nipple. He takes the stiffening nub between his lips and applies the most delicious pressure, sucking and swirling his tongue until the flesh is taut with arousal. Once he’s satisfied with that one, he kisses across your chest and lavishes the other with the same treatment, making you keen and gasp. The fact that his eyes don’t leave yours the entire time is unbearably hot.

When he’s deemed you suitably desperate, he leaves your chest and presses a few sloppy kisses to the side of your neck, then doffs his own shirt before returning to your mouth. You jam your tongue between his lips and moan into the kiss, devoid of grace or precision, giving yourself over entirely to the fierce need blazing through your body. The slide of skin against skin is nothing short of beautiful. Your hands return to tangle in his hair and he groans loudly when you give the strands a sharp tug. His blunt fingertips press bruises into your back, greedy for the feeling of your flesh under his. He slides a leg between your own and rolls his hips against your thigh, moaning softly at the sensation. The sound goes straight to your core.

Keeping one hand in his hair, you bring the other to rest on his waist. You use your grip on his hair to yank his head back enough that your lips can reach his neck. While you ravish the sensitive skin with bites and kisses, your other hand pulls him to you by the waist as you subtly grind against him. He whimpers and bucks his hips forward, searching out friction against your thigh. His breath comes in hoarse gasps and he carves red lines into your flesh as he drags his fingernails up your back. You moan unabashedly and press your leg upward, the way you know will drive him absolutely mad.

The two of you quickly fall into an easy rhythm. You kiss and suck bruises into his skin like blossoming roses, occasionally pinching the flesh between your teeth to coax a needy cry from him. Your hands roam over every part of him you can reach, desperate to feel all of him. He does the opposite, hands staying solid around your waist, sometimes digging his nails into your back as he sucks in a gasp of pleasure. He’s sporting a definite hard-on by now and he rolls his hips against your thigh in long strokes, spilling moans and soft pleas right beside your ear.

Even though he’s not actually touching you anywhere between the legs, you can feel your pleasure mounting with every movement of his body. It’s a heady feeling, being able to make him come apart like this. You close your eyes and inhale slowly, trying to imprint the scent of him upon your memory. His hips begin to speed up, grinding against your thigh with renewed enthusiasm, and his breathy pants carry a note of whining need.

“Stop,” he cries.

He lets go of you and extracts himself from your grip. He backs away from you and leans against the opposite wall, breathing hard, skin flushed, a collar of violet hickeys splashed across his skin.

“What’s wrong?”

He doesn’t look at you when he answers. “It’s-- fuck, it was just too much all of a sudden,” he mutters.

“What do you mean?” you ask. You’re not sure whether to be concerned or not.

He extends a hand to you, and you tentatively cross the hallway and take it. He pulls you to him, wrapping you in a gentle hug and burying his face in your hair. “I don’t want you to hate me,” he whispers.

“Dude, I could never hate you,” you protest, hugging him back.

He runs a gentle hand over your back. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to do this because I’m gonna die, or whatever,” he says.

“Stop it. You’re not going to die.” You pull back to place a hand on his cheek. “And I want to do this, because I like you, you dumbass.”

He giggles and presses a kiss to your forehead that has you melting.

“Good,” he mumbles into your skin. “‘Cause if I don’t cum soon I might actually explode.”

Sparks of affection and arousal tingle in your core. “You’re so sensitive,” you tease. The hand on his cheek slides to the back of his neck while your other hand snakes over his torso. “Getting that turned on just from grinding on my leg?”

“Mm-hm,” he whispers, voice tainted with the whine of arousal as your fingers just barely brush over the front of his jeans.

“What do you want?” you whisper.

He swallows hard, mouth parted slightly as he bucks against your hand. “I want-- to make you cum. Please?” He fixes his eyes on you and you feel a thrill of pleasure shoot through you.

You reward him by undoing the buttons of his jeans and sliding them down his thighs. He wriggles them the rest of the way off, and then he’s pressed against the wall, at your mercy, in only his briefs and with your touch burned into his collarbone. You groan softly at the sight. He shivers under your touch, and then he’s sinking to his knees and tugging at the zipper on your pants.

“Is this okay?” he asks.

You nod and bite your lip, feeling yourself grow increasingly aroused at the proximity of his hands to your center. You help him remove your pants and underwear, and he lets out a soft gasp at the sight of your body bared to him.

He leans forward and gives your mound a tentative lick, which causes you to swear even as you suck in a sharp breath. He does it again, grazing just below where you’d most like his tongue to be most. You’re coming pathetically undone just from this, and the sight of Ethan on his knees in front of you is way hotter than you would ever admit.

He taps your thigh to get your attention. “I think it would be easier if you were on the floor. If that’s okay with you?” he says. “I can put my shirt down if you don’t want to sit on the floor with uh, you know.”

You shrug. “Seems clean enough to me,” you say. You sit down on the floor in front of him and immediately he’s on you, kissing your mouth, grazing his teeth over your lower lip. His hands cradle your torso as he lays you gently on your back, never breaking the kiss. The feeling of his skin against yours and the heat of his body hovering over you is intoxicating. He begins to slide down your body, caressing every curve and plane, peppering kisses over all your imperfections. You’d be embarrassed at the attention if it wasn’t so fucking hot.

When he reaches the dip of your pelvis, he pauses, then delivers a long lick to your cunt that has you gasping for breath. His tongue drags over the sensitive flesh in infuriatingly slow patterns that draw something tight in your belly. Pleasure clouds your mind and every sensation pulses in  your veins like sweet venom. You think of the lionfish, and that makes you giggle.

Ethan raises his head to look at you. “What’s so funny?” he asks.

“Nothing. I just started thinking about--” you feel a little bit hysterical as you struggle to articulate it-- “I was thinking about the lionfish. And how they’re, you know, venomous.”

He quirks an eyebrow in amusement. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever met someone with that kind of kink, but if that’s what you’re into…”

“Shut up,” you snort.

“Aye-aye, cap’n.” He gives you a wink and then dives right back into your pussy, sucking on your clit with such sudden and deliberate force that your head snaps to the side and you dig your fingers into the cool marble of the floor.

He’s got to be some kind of vagina whisperer, because you’ve never been with anyone who made you feel pleasure so intense. You spill curses and needy moans into the air around you, hips bucking against the pressure of his tongue on you. You spread your thighs as wide as you can and though you know you’ll be sore tomorrow, the pleasure singing in your muscles makes it worth it. Every time you think you’re about to fall off the edge, he does something to draw you right back in, continuing in this cycle until you think you might burst.

“I’m so close. Please, Ethan,” you whine.

“Mm, not quite.”

It’s his voice, but at the same time it’s… not. You prop yourself up on one elbow to see him better, and when he looks up at you his pupils have faded and you’re staring into a pair of endless white abysses.

You start to draw back, but he latches his arms around your thighs, holding you in place with a titanium grip. He never ceases his ministrations to your cunt, and you can’t hold back a desperate moan even as your brain screams at you to get away.

“Stop,” you say. He ignores you, suckling on your clit and making explosions in your head, but you say it again, louder. “Hey. Stop!”

He finally takes his face from your cunt, though he doesn’t remove himself. Instead he lets go of your thighs and with one hand begins to trace tingling patterns over your lower abdomen, drifting just above your cunt.

“Do you really want me to stop, love?” he whispers. “You know how good I could make you feel. Much better than anything _he_ could do for you.” He presses an almost gentle kiss to your clit, while the finger on your abdomen trails over your sopping folds and slowly begins to enter you. “I could do things to you that he couldn’t even _dream of_.”

You want to say something, but the heady buzz of pleasure in your core is making it difficult to focus on anything except lying there feeling it. He adds a second finger, and the sensation is ridiculously decadent. You gasp as his tongue squirms against your clit, almost vibrating in its motions, ratcheting your desire up to unimaginable levels.

“S-stop, I’m-- I’m gonna--”

He starts to work even faster, now three fingers pistoning into you while his tongue lavishes your clit. The knot in your belly tightens, and you feel yourself subconsciously curling toward him, legs widening, nearly crying as you gasp in lungfuls of air. Your orgasm is like a freight train, appearing on the horizon and coming gradually closer until it hits you with unbelievable force. A scream tears itself from your throat and your every muscle goes stiff as you tremble with the power of it, your muscles contracting and trembling and the air shooting from your lungs.

You come down from your peak shaking and panting, limbs weak but every movement laced with pleasure. It takes you a few moments to notice Ethan kneeling over you, eyes wide with horror.

“Y/N, are you okay?” he asks. “Did he hurt you?”

You look at him unseeingly, which seems only to make him panic more. “Oh, god. Fuck,” he mutters.

He starts to climb off of you, but you grab him by the arm. He pauses, hovering over your body, and you notice that he’s still considerably hard. Your fingers trace down his arm, to the hand that had just been pounding the ever-loving shit out of you. Your arousal is still evident on his fingers.

Without breaking eye contact, you bring the hand to your mouth and wrap your lips around one finger. You moan at the taste of yourself and the memory of pleasure still tingling in your core. Ethan looks uncertain, but he doesn’t pull away, and he bites his lip when you add a second finger and swirl your tongue around them.

After a minute he removes his fingers and looks at you in complete seriousness. “Be honest with me,” he says. His voice is so gentle you could melt. “Is this what you want?”

You nod, and his eyes seem to light up with need. He starts to slide his fingers into you, but you stop him with a hand on his wrist.

“I’m ready,” you whisper. “I need your cock. Please, Ethan.”

“Oh, fuck,” he mutters.

He closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath, then leans down to press sweet kisses over your jaw. He works the skin with teeth and tongue while he presses the head of his cock against your entrance. You’re already sufficiently prepped, so the burn is delicious and maddening. You can tell that he’s being careful for your sake, taking his time, but you don’t want that. You need him, a pure animal desire.

“Ethan,” you moan, “please fuck me. Please…”

He emits a breathy gasp, then he enters you in a swift motion. It’s more than that for which you were prepared and you cry out a bit, but quickly assure Ethan that you’re more than fine. He begins to rock his hips, speeding up when you dig your nails into the base of his spine and pull him closer.

“I’m not going to let him take you from me,” he gasps. “I won’t let him touch you ever again.”

There’s a touch of jealousy in his voice, and for some reason it sends a spark of heat straight to your center. You want him to cover your skin in his touch, bruise you with his kisses, mark you with teeth and nails so the parasite in his brain knows that you will never be his. There’s a sense of hope in that, filling you with a fiery determination. You will never, ever let Ethan go. You’ll die before you see him consumed by that monster.

Your body is trembling, turning over sensitive as your second orgasm looms closer. You drag your nails up his skin and fold your legs so that your ankles are digging into his lower back, hips bucking into his thrusts. Low moans and curses mingle with the sound of his heaving breaths. He curves his body toward you, pressing your foreheads together, your breath intermingling in the space between you.

“Are you close?” he whispers.

“Yes, yes please, _please_ make me cum,” you groan.

He rests his weight on one arm while the other goes to your clit, rubbing tight circles over the delicate organ, and then it’s over. You fall over the edge with a hoarse scream, your muscles spasming around his cock. Your cumming drives him closer, his thrusts erratic but powerful, slamming into you with an animalistic need. Not long after he goes stiff above you and emits a high-pitched cry, trembling with the force of his orgasm.

He extracts himself from you and collapses on the floor at your side. He wraps an arm around you and pulls you to him, burying his face in your hair and stroking his thumb over your skin.

“Holy shit,” he whispers.

You let out an embarrassed giggle. “That good?”

He chuckles into your hair. Suddenly, he jerks back and looks at you in terror. “Fuck, we didn’t use a condom,” he says.

“Don’t worry. I have the IUD,” you say, pressing a calming hand against his face. “You don’t have any diseases or anything, right?”

“Not that I know of,” he says with a smile. He relaxes into your touch and curls up against you once more, letting out a sigh of contentment.

You close your eyes and rest your forehead against his. Inside you, the angry determination sits poised like a serpent, coiled and ready to strike. There is absolutely no way in heaven or hell that you are letting this boy go. Not in a million years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually did a lot of research for this chapter please validate me


	9. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You have a nightmare, and Kathryn helps you steal a body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy FUCK, this chapter was a beast. I feel so bad that I haven't update this fic in over 2 months, and even though this chapter is over 8,000 words there's no smut and almost no Ethan so I tried to make up for it with a little Kathryn. I promise the next chapter will have smut in it. It will probably also be the last chapter of this fic. When I started this story 7 months ago I had no idea what it would become, and I've gotta say I'm really happy with it so far! But i think it's about time to put it to rest, so to speak (heehee, ghost puns). I can't predict when I'll have enough time to write the final chapter, but I'm going to try my best to finish it before the end of the year. I've been really busy with school and getting ready to graduate so it's difficult to find free time to write, but I'm really excited for the final chapter! On that note, enjoy :)

“You thought you could get rid of me.”

Darkness swirls around you, a live thing, undulating and angry. Its caress is like a velvet fist, soft but bruising, an ache so deep it sinks into your bones and taints your blood. It hurts.

“You thought that if you ignored me, I would just disappear.”

It’s not a question, but a statement, one you don’t have the guts to pretend is untrue. The thought had been but a seedling in your subconscious-- you’re not sure at what point it took root, but you cannot deny the hold it has upon your heart. Its fragrant, delicate sprouts had shot up, the speckled leaves flourishing outward, concealing the truth that was even more deeply rooted in your heart, the truth you had been too afraid to confront: that no matter what you do, you will never be rid of this creature.

A voice cuts through the void, giggling in a pitch far beyond what your brain is capable of processing. It drags thorny tendrils across your mind, prodding with claws of jagged glass that make your bones chafe and rob the heat from your veins. You writhe in pain yet your body is motionless. Your limbs are bound but cannot feel your restraints; your body is simply unresponsive to your will.

You’re abruptly aware of a point of sharp heat at the base of your spine. The sensation is more acute than the slow, rippling ache inflicted by the shadows. The heat grows more concentrated, a keen, piercing soreness that digs into the small of your back. There is little flesh there, and you’re sure it’s pushing straight through to the bone and spreading into your vertebrae. It’s the kind of pain that would usually rob you of breath, if you had any to begin with. You can’t even tell if your eyes are closed or not, and any efforts to move your eyelids are useless. You’re paralyzed here.

There is that distorted giggling again, coming from every direction and nowhere, reverberating in the vast expanse of your brain. Although the darkness allows no conception of physical space, you feel that the void is contracting, pressing its heavy, crawling emptiness against your skin, encroaching on your senses. Devouring you.

“Three days.”

You come back to yourself with a cry. You’ve kicked the sheets off your body and they lay in a tangled heap on the floor next to your bed. You take in the space with fragile caution, reassuring yourself that you’re okay, you’re in your own bedroom and you’re okay. Gray early morning light struggles to peek in around the edges of the window shades and casts a colorless pallor over the room.

A glance at your watch shows you that it’s just past six in the morning. You don’t have to go to work until noon, but the nightmare left you with a strangely fragile feeling in your limbs, and you doubt you’d be able to fall back asleep if you tried. So you roll out of bed and trudge down the hall to the kitchen.

A cloud of fruit flies scatters when you open the refrigerator. Holding out a hand, you can feel that the air inside the fridge isn’t cold at all. You uncap the milk jug, take a sniff, and clap a hand over your mouth to keep from straight up vomiting. Yeah, definitely spoiled. A quick glance at the rest of the items in the fridge reveals that the milk isn’t the only thing gone bad.

With a long-suffering groan, you retrieve a garbage bag from underneath the sink and begin to comb through the contents of the fridge and freezer, tossing everything that’s spoiled or on the verge of becoming so and setting aside whatever you can salvage. In the end you have two trash bags’ worth of refuse and a handful of slightly-less-perishable items. After disposing of the garbage, you locate the oft-neglected mop bucket and fill it with a combination of bleach and hot water. With an old sponge you scrub the interior of the fridge until you’ve eliminated the stains and piles of indecipherable goop, removing each shelf individually to give it your full attention. Finally, you set some old towels beneath the machine and unplug it from the wall to allow it to defrost for a time.

That chore finished, you turn to the rest of the kitchen. The remnants of your roommate’s dinner from the night before sit curdling on the stove, and more dirty dishes litter the sink and various other flat surfaces. You decide to take advantage of this unexpected cleaning high and start about gathering all the used dishes and bits of trash scattered around the apartment. You move furniture to get at months’ worth of lost socks and spare change, beat the dust and food crumbs out of the rugs, break out the duster for what might well be the first time since you bought it, and sweep and mop every floor in the apartment, aside from your roommate’s bedroom.

The sun has long been blazing in the cloudless Carolina sky when you heave the last of the garbage into the bin at the end of the driveway. Sweat curls down your back and drips into your eyes. You retreat back into your apartment and the comfort of the air conditioning, gazing with satisfaction upon the results of your labor. You’ll put the fridge back together tomorrow, once it’s had enough time to defrost; and in the meantime, you need to get ready for work.

It almost seems pointless to take a shower only to go back outside and get sweaty again, but the cool water feels amazing on your skin. Despite the residual exhaustion from your nightmare, you’re actually feeling almost… perky. A good thing, too, because today’s tours will consist of a summer camp of ninety-seven elementary schoolers.

You had allowed your mind to wander little while you’d cleaned, and it’s easy enough to distract yourself during the tours. Once the last of the children has returned to the bus and you’ve changed out of your costume, though, it’s much more difficult to keep yourself from dwelling on your nightmare and the implications of the thing you’re planning to do. You can’t quite believe it yourself; or maybe you don’t want to believe that you are capable of such a thing. And maybe, under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t be. But something changed that night you went to the aquarium with Ethan, something feral and terrifying but more powerful than anything you have ever felt before.

You’ve never been in love before, but you imagine this must be the thing you are feeling. What else could explain the fire that blazes through you when Ethan’s hand brushes your thigh, the way your heart rushes like a speeding train whenever you see his brilliant smile? He’s the best kind of drug-- you feel more like yourself around him, like you can do anything with him beside you, and just the thought of him lends a certain buoyancy to your step.

It’s a bit silly, falling in love with someone who you’ve only known for a few weeks. The rational part of your brain wants to rebel against these powerful, alien feelings. Yet, just the way you’ve always believed in spirits even before you had proof, something from deep within you tells you that it’s the truth. You’re in love. It’s scary and silly and completely ridiculous, but there it is. You’ve never approached the topic with him before, but even without having to ask you know that there is something between you, something that he feels too. It’s a beautiful feeling, to be so sure of something.

As you traipse through the muggy heat back to your apartment, your mind slips toward more unsavory places. The nightmare had obviously been a warning. The memory of his voice still makes you bones itch:  _ Three days _ . What a cliche number. Leave it to him to be both horrifically ominous and resoundingly hackneyed at once.

Since that first day, Ethan has shown up at your apartment every evening with new research- yellowed documents and newspaper clippings, old record books from churches and libraries from all over the county. You can fool yourself, most nights, into believing that you’re actually going to find a solution among these piles of dusty pages, and you can see Ethan believes it too. There’s a renewed energy in his movements, a bit of pep in his voice that you’ve never seen on him before. It gives you hope to see him so positive. You’d do anything to make sure that smile never leaves his face. You  _ will _ do anything-- whatever is necessary to keep him alive.

  
  


The thought of murder no longer frightens you. It’s a banner that you can raise above the fortress of your heart, a blazing symbol of your devotion. As cheesy as it sounds, Ethan makes you feel like you can do anything when the two of you are together. And besides, it’s not  _ really _ murder if the person was already dead to begin with, right?

You’ve found a million ways to justify it to yourself, and all of them sound pathetic and hollow to your own conscience, but you’ve trained your mind to squash those doubts and ignore the survivors. It’s easier to fake rationality now that you’ve got a plan. It came to you quite on accident, a spare glance at a newspaper that someone had thrown in the trash. His smile had been what had captured your gaze, unabashed joy shining through bright eyes framed by a mop of brown curls. He was perfect.

You’d snatched the page out of the trash-- thankfully it had been on top so you hadn’t had to go digging for it-- and scanned the article with a ravenous furor. Octavio Fuentes, 19. Freshman at Sacred Heart University majoring in… blah blah blah… valued member of the community… blah blah…

And then, there it was:

Strangled to death.

It’s a sign of just how low you’ve come that your heart quickens in excitement at that. It’s quick and leaves relatively no trace, so the body will be almost perfectly intact.

The obituary goes on to say that he’ll be buried in a closed-casket ceremony tomorrow evening. That doesn’t give you much time to recover the body; you’ll only have a narrow window between the time his body is placed in the casket and is brought to the burial site. Actually getting the body out of the funeral home will be another matter entirely.

But you’re starting to form a plan…

  
  


McLellyn Funeral Home is a squat and unassuming building at the edge of a pasty suburb. The waiting room is plainly furnished, all dark brown carpet and wallpaper that matches the drab, square couches and armchairs pushed against the walls. A receptionist huddles behind a desk against the far wall, hunched over a computer and typing rapidly and without pause.

You duck your head a bit, doing your best to put on your mourner face, and approach the desk.

“Excuse me,” you say, voice cracking a bit. Internally you revel in your keen acting abilities.

The receptionist glances up from the computer screen and fixes you with a look somewhere between annoyance and supreme disinterest. You swallow back the nerves bubbling in your stomach and continue, “I have an appointment this afternoon to discuss casket… sizing.”

You realize part of the way through speaking that you have no idea what people actually  _ do _ at a funeral home, but your made-up excuse must have worked, because the receptionist nods briskly at one of the couches.

“Thank you. Oh, may I use your bathroom?” you ask.

You almost think the reception is rolling their eyes, but they gesture toward a hallway off to the left and return to the computer.

“I appreciate it,” you say. You hurry down the hallway, toward a door marked “restroom”. You start to open it, glancing back down the hallway toward the lobby. The receptionist is facing away from you, heavily engrossed in whatever is on the computer screen. You step back and allow the bathroom door to close with a noticeable  _ snap _ , then slip as noiselessly as you can farther down the hallway.

You have no idea what you’re looking for, but it’s not a huge building, and you figure if you wander around long enough you’ll eventually find what you need. Another hallway branches off of this one and you turn down it. The drab carpet muffles the sound of your footsteps as you creep along. If you didn’t know what this place was supposed to be, you’d find it almost humdrum, with the plain fixtures and monotonous color scheme, but the fact that you know there are probably dozens of dead bodies in this building makes it a million times creepier.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket and you snatch it quickly. It’s a text from your friend Kathryn.

 

**Kathryn:** did you find it yet???

 

Ah, good ol’ Kathryn. It’s rare to find a friend who would literally help you bury a body if you asked them too. Or, in this case, steal a body. It’s the kind of commitment that can only come from two decades of friendship. Still, you’d been surprised when she’d agreed to it. Not without questions, of course, but you’d promised she would get her answers after all of this was over. She hadn’t seemed thrilled with that, but she’d gone along with it. Which had been a relief, since there isn’t anyone else you trusted with this kind of task. Also, she’s the only one of your friends who has a car and nothing better to do on a Thursday night.

 

**Y/N:** still looking. any word on a back exit?

 

**Kathryn:** nada.

 

The plan you’d agreed upon was that you would sneak into the back room to find the body while Kathryn scoped out the back of the building for a discreet exit, then help you load up the body and drive away. Even though it’s late afternoon, the August sun is still shining smugly in its cloudless blue nest, so you’ll have to be quick to avoid being spotted. You figure you don’t have long before the receptionist figures out that you’re not supposed to be there and sends someone after you. In the event that you need to make a quick escape, you’d tucked a ski mask in one of your pockets, though you hope you won’t need to use it.

At the end of the hallway, there is a door marked “maintenance” on your left and a short passage leading into a sort of antechamber to your right. You’re still standing in the hallway, debating the best course, when you hear a sound behind you.

Footsteps. Voices.

Panic spikes through your mind, temporarily driving out reason. You lurch for the closet door and twist the doorknob, but of course it’s locked. You whirl around and hurl yourself into the antechamber. Three doors line the walls. Picking one at random, you yank on the knob and almost cry out when it swings inward without resistance. The space beyond is completely dark and a wave of chilled air rolls through the doorway. You close the door behind you as quietly as you can and press yourself against it, holding your breath. Your heart is beating so rapidly you’re sure they can hear it. You bite your lip and focus on the sounds outside.

The footsteps grow louder, the voices chatting conversationally in what must be English but your brain is too addled to focus on the words. The noises get closer, closer, crescendo… and then slowly fade in the other direction.

You let out the breath you’d been holding and place a hand over your slowing heart. You wipe away the perspiration that had been gathering on your forehead and smile to yourself, slightly giddy with relief at not getting caught.

Now that the immediate danger has subsided, you retrieve your phone and point the screen at the wall, searching for the light switch. When you find and flip it, the low buzzing of fluorescent lamps fills the room half a second before you’re bathed in eerie pale light.

You blink a few times as your eyes adjust to the sudden brightness. The room is unnervingly normal compared to the rest of the building. It is not unlike a doctor’s office, with white walls lined with counters and cabinets and a nearly spotless tile floor. Along the counters are various tools, vials, and other mechanisms you don’t recognize. In the center of the room is a row of low metal gurneys. Most of them are empty, except for the one on the far left. Though it’s difficult to make out from this angle, you recognize the bundle of auburn curls.

He’s naked aside from a thin paper gown like what someone undergoing surgery might wear. His face is peaceful, his expression blank and unworried- you could almost believe he’s just sleeping. He looks so small in the glaring light of the room. Your heart twinges at the sight of the finger-shaped bruises on his neck.

You grab your phone and see you have another text from Kathryn.

 

**Kathryn:** found a back door. sending you my location now.

 

A small map appears on your phone screen. You click on it and zoom in to see the little pulsing dot of Kathryn’s GPS. The map is overlaid with an image of the funeral home and another dot showing your location. Though the map doesn’t include the interior of the building, you can roughly infer which route you should take to find the back door.

 

**Y/N:** got the body. omw.

 

Now for the fun part. You honestly hadn’t thought too much about this part. Should you try wheeling the gurney down the hall? It would be a lot easier to transport, although its awkward shape would make it difficult to maneuver the narrow hallways. You could find a body bag and try carrying him out that way, but you aren’t sure you’d be able to carry him very far, and anyway a stranger lugging a giant bag around would probably be fairly suspicious. Although, you feel like you’d look pretty suspicious either way.

You settle on the gurney. You don’t trust your strength to allow you to carry an entire person back outside, and anyway, worst case scenario, if someone is chasing you then you can shove the gurney at them to slow them down.

The wheels are unlocked and glide almost silently across the smooth tile. You pull it behind you and try to ignore how creepy this whole thing is. You’re about to open the door back into the antechamber when you hear voices again.  _ Dammit _ .

You wait, ear pressed to the crack between the door and the wall, but whoever it is, they’re taking their sweet damn time. You could wait and pray that the conversation eventually leads them away from your location, or you could take a chance and head out there now while they’re distracted. You’re getting increasingly anxious with every second, sure that in the next moment you’ll be found out.

 

**Kathryn:** i’ve got the car ready. hurry!!!!

 

That does it for you. You unlatch the door and peek your head out slowly, looking down the hallway on either side. The voices seem to be coming from somewhere to the left, opposite the direction you want to go, and nobody is in sight. You pull the gurney out into the hallway and close the door silently behind you.

You thank your guardian angel when the next door opens without a struggle. It’s a challenge to maneuver the gurney through the doorway without making a ton of noise, and every second that you stand there your nerves ratchet up two more notches. Glancing behind you, you can see what appears to be the exit door at the end of the hallway. The voices are still far enough away that you’re not too worried about anyone coming around the corner, but you still have to make it the length of this hallway before you can relax.

The gurney’s wheels are struggling with the metal threshold, but you can’t get to them properly and hold the door open at the same time. You tug at the side of the gurney, but the wheels have gotten twisted and will only move at a diagonal angle. With a quiet huff, you gently ease the door partly closed so it’s held open by the gurney while you move to the end to reorient the wheels.

You try pulling it back toward you, but with the angle of the door it would be far too noisy. The only way you can see that you fix it is to lift up the foot of the device and turn the wheels yourself.

It’s not as heavy as you expected, though still pretty difficult with one hand, and from this angle the front wheels begin to slide forward as soon as you try to lift it from the foot. You take a calming breath, plant your feet in a low squat to give yourself better leverage, and lift the end of the gurney. It slips forward again, sending you tumbling forward. You bite down on a startled yelp, but land with your torso awkwardly smushed against the gurney, prompting it to roll forward a couple feet.

As it slides away from you, taking away the thing that had been keeping you upright, you instinctively reach out for something to steady yourself. In your confusion, you aim for the knob of the door which has now been freed from the restraint of the gurney leaning against it, but your grip fails and you tumble forward, landing hard on the tile.

It takes several long moments for you to register the gravity of what you have just done. Not until you realize that the voices have stopped that you try to look behind you-- and see two suited figures at the end of the hallway, gaping at you in equal astonishment.

You have the advantage, but just barely, as you pull yourself to your feet and slam the door closed. You don’t have time to try to lock it, and anyway it would likely only be a minor inconvenience for your pursuers. You can hear muffled shouting from behind as you lurch forward and shove your weight into the gurney, sending it flying down the hallway, the wheels orienting themselves with the force of the momentum. You let go of the gurney a few moments early and hurl yourself toward the exit door, swinging it open just in time for your gruesome treasure to glide over the threshold.

Kathryn is leaning against the wall, and she jumps at your sudden entrance. You don’t have to say anything; she goes for the head while you take the body’s feet, and together you hoist it into the open trunk of her idling car. While you arrange the body to avoid damage and struggle with the ancient trunk door, Kathryn leaps into the driver’s seat. She’s already shoving open the passenger door when the two employees from the funeral home burst out the back door.

They’re shouting at you, but you don’t even register their words. You wrestle the trunk closed at last and dart for the passenger seat, but something holds you back. Two pairs of hands latch onto your shirt and tug. You whirl around as best you can with them pulling you back and flail wildly, not aiming for anything special, just trying to free yourself, but they maintain a solid grip.

Kathryn yells something to you that sounds like a warning, and suddenly the rear lights of the car blink to life. The car jerks backward-- not enough to actually make contact, but the movement startles your pursuers enough that they let go of you and jump back with a shout. You hurl yourself through the doorway of the passenger side, landing half in Kathryn’s lap, but she expertly throws the car into drive and is speeding onto the main road before you’ve even closed your door.

As you settle back into the seat, the giddiness over escaping successfully starts to take over. You throw your head back and laugh, clapping your hands together with excitement. You did it. You stole a body. Now Ethan can finally be free of the parasite inhabiting his body-- he’s free. You’re both finally free.

Your laughter subsides and a tense silence descends on the car. Kathryn stares ahead with an unreadable expression, hands strangling the steering wheel and jaw clenched. Guilt seeps in.

You take a deep breath to center yourself. “You’re probably wondering--”

“Save it.”

The sharpness of her tone gives you a start. “You don’t even want to know--” you begin, but she cuts you off again.

“Y/N. You know I love you. I would do anything for you,” she says. “But I cannot imagine, out of all the possible scenarios on this entire plane of reality, why the fuck you would ask me to help you steal a goddamn  _ body _ .”

Guilt and shame curdle in your gut. “I know it’s a lot to ask of you,” you say, “and I really am s--”

“Do not say you’re fucking sorry. If you were really fucking sorry you wouldn’t have asked me to do it in the first place.”

Every word feels like a punch to your stomach. You’ve never seen Kathryn like this. You’d almost prefer it if she was yelling and insulting you; this deadly, seething anger is infinitely worse. Because you know she’s right. You absolutely shouldn’t have asked her to do this, and if you’d had any other options, if it had been for anyone besides Ethan, you wouldn’t have.

It occurs to you that you’ve never told Kathryn about Ethan. Your best fucking friend, and you haven’t even told her you’re in love. What kind of self-centered asshole does something like that? You’ve been so wrapped up in your own problems that you’ve completely neglected your friendships, and especially the one that probably means the most to you. You feel like garbage.

You should. You are an awful person.

But self-pity and retroactive loathing aren’t going to solve the situation at hand. You close your eyes, take a long, slow inhale, and then let it out.

“You absolutely have the right to be furious with me. And you know that I wouldn’t have asked you if you weren’t my only option,” you say.

She raises an eyebrow, though her gaze doesn’t leave the road ahead.

You take that as permission to go on, so you do. You tell her about the old jail, your first time meeting the ghost-- she’s used to the more peculiar aspects of your profession, so she doesn’t begin to show disbelief until you get to the part where you first met Ethan, the real Ethan (you decide to skip over the more… intimate details of that encounter). Her skepticism only grows as you continue, about the ghost, the nightmare. The night at the aquarium. That you’re in love with someone you met three weeks ago.

Remarkably, out of all that, the last point is the one that Kathryn seems to believe the least. “You, in love?” she snorts. “Now that’s something we never thought would happen.”

You gently slug her shoulder, and she gives you a tiny smile. “Believe it or not, I  _ am _ capable of forming meaningful relationships with living people, too,” you joke.

She sighs. “Well, I can’t say I believe all of this,” she says. “But I’m not going to let you fuck around with spirits unsupervised.”

You brighten up at that. “Are you--?”

“I’ll help you with your weird necromancy thing, you dweeb,” she says with a grudging smile.

You snort. “Love you too, nerd.”

“Let me make a quick pit stop and then we can head over to wherever you need to go,” she says.

She turns into a gas station and pulls up to one of the pumps. Grabbing her wallet, she hops out of the car and heads inside to pay. You lean back against the seat and fold your hands in your lap, twiddling your thumbs in giddy excitement. Honestly, you wouldn’t have been surprised if Kathryn had straight up left you on the side of the road, but this is an even better outcome than you could have imagined. In just a few minutes, you’ll be on your way home to store the body and then you can finish preparing for the ritual. Getting Ethan to come along will be another issue entirely, but you can figure it out.

Minutes pass. You pick at a rip in your shorts and drum your fingers on the door. Looking around the lot, you see there’s only one other car parked at the station. Actually, most of the buildings around here appear fairly empty. Probably everyone’s gone home at the end of the work day. It’s atypically quiet for the city, except for the distant whine of a police siren and a dog barking in a nearby tenement building.

You sink down in your seat and pull your knees up to your chin, bracing your feet against the glove compartment. Down here it’s safe and comfortable and you don’t have to think about your problems, just close your eyes and remember that you’re almost there. It’s almost over.

Somewhere down the road, though not as far as before, the whooping alarm of the police car can be heard again. Trying to squeeze through traffic? There aren’t many other cars on the road this late in the afternoon; maybe a tour van blocking the highway or something.

You sigh and tap your fingers on your knees. What’s keeping Kathryn? There’s hardly anyone else here so it’s not like she has to wait in some giant line. You wiggle back into a normal sitting position and squint into the store through the glass doors. You can barely make out the counter, almost parallel to the parking lot, and Kathryn-- standing in front of it, tapping her foot. Not moving. Waiting?

She shifts to the side and then you can see the cashier behind the counter. They’ve got an old landline pressed to their ear, talking quickly into it. Their head flicks toward you, though maybe that’s just your imagination. In the background, the whine of police sirens grows louder. Closer.

Everything clicks for you in a sudden and brutal rush. Your hand goes automatically to the handle, but it doesn’t budge. You unclip your seat belt and reach over to the driver’s side to undo the locks, but nothing happens. Kathryn must have disabled it from outside with her keys. If you’re not getting out the traditional way, you’ve got to get a little creative.

You clamber over the center console and into the back seat. You lie on your back across the seat with your hands against the passenger side door for leverage, then kick the driver’s side back window with as much force as you can gather. Of course, it doesn’t work. You cast about for a tool, and see a windshield scraper lying on the floor. You grab it and set to work battering the side and back windows, with little result other than some minor scratches. You cast the useless thing aside with a huff.

The police cars are even closer now. You estimate you have maybe two or three minutes until they’re right on top of you. Panic claws at the edges of your consciousness, but you can’t let yourself slip. You can’t give up, not when you’re so close.

Something tugs at the corner of your mind, a long-forgotten memory from driver’s ed classes. In case of emergency, back and side windows are made of tempered glass and can be broken from the force of a small, sharp object… You search the car for something that you could use, but find nothing.

And then your gaze lands on the headrests.

They’re the removable kind, with two metal rods in the bottom to allow for adjustments. You press the buttons that loose the headrest and pull it out. A glance outside tells you that the police will probably be coming from your right, so your best chance would be to break the left side window and sneak through the apartment complex beside the gas station.

You brace yourself on the back seat and hold the headrest with the metal pieces facing out, mentally plotting the best way to hit it. You take a steadying breath, focus on the glass-- and shove.

A great  _ crack _ resounds through the car, but the glass hardly moves. You haul back and give it another go, and again, nothing much happens. As the sound of police vehicles rises behind you, you hit the glass again and again-- at different angles, different positions, varying speeds and techniques-- and yet there’s hardly a scratch to show for your work.

Even so, you can’t let yourself give up. You’ve sacrificed so much for this, to get so close and to quit right at the brink of everything-- it’s unthinkable.

With a scream of frustration, you put all your strength into your next throw, but as you move forward with the effort of it you feel yourself slip and the trajectory of the headrest slides. It comes into contact with the window, not in the center where you’d been aiming, but closer to the base.

There’s another  _ crack _ , but this one is different-- less solid. More like a grinding of glass than a sudden fissure. The sound gives you hope. You drive the metal ends of the headrest into the miniscule gap between the glass and the door and throw all your weight into it.

With a sound like an explosion, the window shatters in an enormous web of tiny fissures. You smack it again with the headrest and the glass falls away easily, like clearing ice off a windowsill. You wiggle through the gap, ignoring the sting of glass dragging over your skin, and struggle to maneuver out of the car. You grasp for something to hold you up and your hand lands on the gas pump, which comes away easily. You land on your side on the glass-scattered pavement, tearing a long red gouge in your leg along the way, but you’re out. You’re alive.

At that thought, your mind flickers briefly to the boy in Kathryn’s trunk, but there’s no way you’d be able to reasonably carry the body on your own. After all you went through to get it, you’ll have to leave it behind. You cast a final empathetic glance at the place where the boy lies disturbed in his rest and whisper a hope for his soul’s safe passage.

The sound of your name tears you back to reality. You look up to see Kathryn barreling across the parking lot, a pair of gas station employees stumbling behind her. To your right you can see three police cars wailing up the road.

You take off in the only direction not headed up by your pursuers. At the edge of the lot is a narrow ravine with a good two feet of sewer water flowing through it. You take a flying leap over the brownish stream and land unsteadily on the other side, your feet struggling for purchase in the slick grass, but you force yourself onward. On the other side of the ravine the ground slopes downward toward a towering apartment complex. You duck into an alley pathway between two buildings and follow it, realizing too late how easy it would be for them to cut you off in this narrow passage. You just have to hope they don’t catch up.

Another path branching off of that one deposits you in a courtyard lined with stoops. Older women pin laundry to clotheslines and children play in the grass. You weave around them, ignoring the sour looks and exclamations of surprise, heading for another alleyway between the buildings on the far side of the yard.

Behind you, someone screams. You dare a glance over your shoulder and see a police officer not far behind you, gun drawn. Panic spikes in your heart. You push yourself onward, through thundering heartbeat and aching breaths, fear and exhaustion warring in your muscles as they carry you back into the relative protection of the alley. This time you take the first turn you see, not caring which direction you’re headed, so long as it’s  _ away _ from here.

Finally the pathway opens onto a main street. You duck through the scattered flocks of tourists darting the sidewalk, trying your best to blend in with the throng despite your sweaty red face and ragged breathing. You arrive at an intersection and tuck yourself into a niche between two gaggles of oblivious sorority girls and stare straight ahead, hoping no one notices that you’re out of place.

A quick glance behind shows that the police have given up the foot chase, at least for now. Then the sound of sirens rises from a few blocks away, and your heart gives a lurch.

As soon as the light turns green, you dart forward through the crosswalk, weaving amongst unseeing passers-by. You mentally begin to map out the path back to your apartment. It’s not too far on foot, though you wouldn’t be able to run the whole way. That’s alright, though; all you need is to be quick and stay out of sight.

It’s almost a straight shot, but you don’t want to make it any easier on the police, so you stick to alleys and side streets. Ultimately your journey almost doubles in length, but it’s a lot harder for someone to trace. The whole way you feel your senses heightened, tuned to every insignificant sound or movement. Every time you catch the sound of police sirens you press yourself into the closest alcove and wait, holding your breath, until the sound has passed.

The home stretch will be the most challenging part. Your apartment is located on a wide street with little shade, few alleyways, and no means of access except for the front door. The building is framed by a cluster of other apartments, and across the street is a long brick building with plenty of windows and no nooks in which to hide should you see someone coming. You’ll need to sprint across a large open space and unlock the door before anyone sees you. It’s a longshot at best, but it’s the only one you have right now.

Finally, you come up on your street. You can see your apartment diagonally from your hidden vantage point. The driveway is empty-- good, because it means fewer obstacles for you to manage, and also that your roommate is out of the house. She doesn’t deserve to get mixed up in your mistakes.

You take slow breaths, waiting for a break in the traffic. As soon as the way is clear, you’ll run.

The seconds stretch impossibly long as you struggle to maintain your breathing. Then there’s a lull in the stream of cars, and that’s your opportunity.

You run without thinking. Your feet hardly touch the pavement, so fast do you move, and your breath tears itself from your lungs in jagged bursts. Your hand is already reaching for your key before you get to the driveway-- but there’s nothing there. You shove your hand back into your pocket, feeling around for the familiar shape of your home key, you check your other pockets but no-- you must have dropped it somewhere.

Thankfully, you keep a spare in the plant beside the stoop. You dig around in the soil and pull out the extra key, damp and dirty from its hiding place, and jam it into the lock-- but the knob is already loose. Did your roommate forget to lock it before leaving? You start to push it open, but then you hear a noise. Voices.

You start to hurry around to the side of the building, the precarious space between the wall and the back fence that holds nothing but an old ladder and a generator, but when you round the corner you see a blue-suited figure not ten yards away. Without thinking, you hurl yourself behind the generator, tucking yourself into the narrow and grimy place between it and the foundation of the building, and hold your breath.

Footsteps grow closer. The officer is speaking into a walkie-talkie, something related to you, heavy shoes crunching on the gravel. A mosquito hovers beside your ear but you bite your lips and dig your fingernails into your palms to keep from swatting at it. It feels like forever before the cop finally comes into view, strolling along as if there are a thousand things he’d rather be doing. He reaches the corner at last, and there’s a fraction of a second while he’s turning when you fear he sees you, but then he disappears from view.

You let out your breath and struggle to calm your fluttering nerves. You have to remind yourself that you’re not safe yet. Keeping low and trembling like a palmetto in a hurricane, you inch along the wall back toward the driveway. You lean out as far as you think you can without being noticed, and see that the space beside the house is clear. Distant sirens, however, alert you to the imminent arrival of even more assailants, and you curse under your breath. Kathryn must have given them your address, knowing you’d try to go home to find Ethan. You’d left your phone in her car so you have no other way of contacting him. You don’t even know if he’d planned to stop by today. You don’t know where he is at all.

You shake your head and take a steadying breath. Getting worked up over this will do nothing to help either of you. You need to come up with a plan.

Your eyes fall on the rusty old grill at the end of the driveway. No one ever uses it anymore, so it just spends its days leaning against the fence, falling apart.

The fence. You can use it to climb over the fence! You silently high-five yourself for creating such a brilliant plan.

There’s no more time to think about it. You dart out from behind the house and launch yourself at the grill, aiming for the side plate, but you miscalculate the height and you end up flailing belly-first against the side of the machine. You stumble back, reeling from the pain of the impact, but the sound of voices from inside the apartment bring you back to yourself. The sound must have alerted the police officers.

Cursing yourself, you back up a few paces and make another try. This time you manage to get enough momentum to climb onto the side of the grill. Though it’s not large enough for you to stand, there’s just enough of a flat surface to give you enough leverage to leap the fence. You start to swing one leg over when you hear a crash from behind, and the apartment door flies open and smacks against the side of the building.

No time to be dainty about it; you leap over the top of the fence and land hard on your feet on the other side. You stumble a few paces, cursing at the pain, but you convert your momentum into speed as you sprint through the neighbor’s backyard and around the side of their house. You hit the street on the other side at a sprint, ducking past an oncoming car that just barely swerves to miss you. You can hear the officers shouting behind you and the wail of nearing sirens. You don’t have the energy to be afraid or even think about where you’re going, you just run and run and  _ run _ .

You weave through the houses and apartments of the quiet neighborhood, ducking through every side path you can think of but never quite managing to shake your pursuers. As you run, the houses seem to get narrower, the stones more weathered, and the streets less evenly paved. It doesn’t hit you that you’ve wandered into the historic district until a familiar iron fence appears in the growing evening gloom. Live oaks twist in the shadows beyond, and through the sound of the wind among the Spanish moss you can make out the chirping of the white towhee. You’re back at the park where all of this began.

You don’t stop to think before you’re sprinting through the open gate and along the shell path to the jail. You don’t know why you’re here-- instinct, maybe, or more likely desperation. The building looms in the summer evening like an austere old guardian, imposing in its destitution. You don’t stop so much as crash into the front door, barely recovering before your fingers begin to fumble with the doorknob. It’s stupid and pointless, you know-- you don’t have the key anymore, and there are no tours this time of day, no one to let you in-- but somehow you’re not surprised when the knob turns and the door swings inward with a groan. You hurl yourself into the darkness and lean your whole weight into the door, finally heaving it shut.

It’s just as hot and musty in here as you remember. Dark, too-- save for the barest glimmer of light at the end of the hallway. You swallow hard, memories of your last visit hovering at the back of your mind, and though you put on a brave expression, no one can see it in the dark.

You inch slowly down the hallway, trailing a hand along the crumbling wall to guide your path. Dead leaves whisper against the worn stone and scattered pebbles skitter underfoot. You flinch at every sudden noise, chipping away at your courageous mask. You let out a shaky breath and clench your free hand into a fist. You remind yourself that no one is here, nothing can hurt you, but it’s too much of a lie.

The wall at the end of the passage is painted with a narrow triangle of light from upstairs. The staircase protests loudly but your steps do not falter in your ascent. The stone wall is warm and rough beneath your fingers, and that makes you think of the first time you touched…  _ him _ . How cold his skin had been without any blood to warm it. How fascinated you’d been by him. How terrified.

You’re sure this room is the same one he’d lured you into last time, but it’s now empty of anything resembling a classroom. Even the chalkboards are gone, leaving in their places nothing but a blank square vaguely less dusty than the rest of the walls. The light comes from a single window opposite the door. The orange beginnings of sunset illuminate the room in a brilliant flash, twinkling with dust motes in the decrepit space. The rest of the windows are completely boarded up.

You go to the one uncovered window and press your hand to the warped, centuries-old glass. It’s colder than you’d anticipated. When you lean close, your breath paints a cloud of steam on the thick pane. You wait, but the steam does not dissipate.

And then, as you watch in paralyzing terror,  _ something _ appears in the little cloud-- like an invisible finger drawing a pattern in the steam. Your heart beats in your throat as the image takes shape. Not until it’s finished do you realize that the marks have spelled out

_ Hello _ .

Cold fingers wrap around your arm, and you don’t have time enough to even scream before they’re yanking you back, into the shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said in the beginning notes, the next chapter will probably be the last one. After I post it, I'm going to go through the whole thing (it's currently 81 pages in Google Docs, oh my) and make a bunch of corrections and tune-ups, then update each chapter accordingly and delete the little "update" chapters. Then I'll make a postscript chapter talking about the real world places I based the locations on and a little bit about their history, and then that will be the end of Ghost Stories! Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me so far on this wild ride of a fic. We're almost there!!


	10. ALSO NOT A CHAPTER

It's me again, your favorite local gay writer! I was just looking back through older chapters of this story and came across the previous update post I made back in July, and got kinda nostalgic, and then guilty because I've gotten even worse at updating this fic. So I just wanted to include a little update for anyone who's still sticking with me.

First off, life update: I made it through the summer with most of my soul intact. Almost died because my roommates adopted two kittens to which I am seriously allergic, but they were so cute I was fine with not breathing. Turned 22 in August and no one showed up to my birthday party so I drank rum alone and cried. Just barely finished my capstone proposal in time to launch into my final semester of college. Had a mental breakdown and spent a night in the psych ward. Started seeing a therapist and got a lot better at not drowning in school work. Still only barely conscious but it's fine, I'm fine.

I'm back up to four jobs (well, technically five if you count the Spanish conversation supplement I teach twice a week), since I'm an RA again. There were a lot of issues in the beginning of the semester but things have mostly calmed down now (knock on wood). I keep telling myself I'm  _this close_ to the end of college! I finished the first draft of my capstone and the final revisions are supposed to be in by the beginning of December, so I'm nearly done with that beast. My other classes have become far more manageable (KNOCK ON WOOD) and I've gotten better at making time for myself and not over-committing.

Right now, my timeline looks like this: this week is Thanksgiving break and I'm staying at school all week, so I'll have a bunch of free time to work on school stuff and potentially free writing. December 4th is the last day of classes, and December 13th is the last day of finals. That night/the next day I'll be moving my stuff into the apartment I'm subleasing downtown. On the 16th I become an official college graduate (still can't believe it honestly). On the 18th I fly home for the holidays and get back on January 3rd. Between then and May, I'll basically just be chilling in Charleston and working. In May, two of my friends are graduating and our (tentative) plan is to get a house together. Who knows if that will really happen though!

 

Now for the juicy stuff: where I plan to go with this fic. I've had an ending in mind for a long time and plan to wrap it up within the next chapter or two. Before I post the final chapter, I'm going to go back through the whole thing and edit it, spruce it up in some parts, and edit each chapter so they'll all be fresh and new. I'm still debating whether or not I want to keep the FAQ and update chapters- for sentimental value, if nothing else. We'll see how I'm feeling when I'm done. Finally, I'll post a bonus chapter talking about my inspiration for the various elements of the story and include pictures of the real-life sites on which I based many of the locations.

 

Aside from all of that, I have a shit ton of fics cropping up in my Google Drive, but I can only find a little bit of time/energy/inspiration for each one so it's been slow going. But I'm really excited to show you all what I've been working on!

 

As always, thank you so much for reading and for putting up with my hectic schedule! If you want to keep up with my life for whatever reason, you can find me on Tumblr at humblepirate or Twitter as humblepir8 (the regular user was already taken). You can also check out my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyZFQQRBfPFrCcvA13-ms4g I do a lot of let's plays, some speed draws, and other fun miscellaneous stuff. Have a great day!!

 

UPDATE 1/9/2018

I promise I haven't forgotten this fic! My life has been kind of hectic over the past month or so as I've graduated college and moved to a new apartment, but my life is finally starting to resemble something akin to peace, so I'm going to try to update this fic as soon as I can. Thank you for your patience!!!


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